INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — Responding to reports in sister publications Vero Beach 32963 and Sebastian River News that a Florida Department of Environmental Protection plan to restore seagrass in the Indian River appeared hopelessly out of date, DEP’s Director of Environmental Assessment and Restoration Drew Bartlett says the presentation of the plan to the Vero Beach City Council was inept.
“Let’s just say that if I was standing in front of the council, I would have handled it differently,” says Bartlett.
Bartlett also says DEP and St. Johns River Water Management District will launch new seagrass evaluations and expand study of seagrass losses in 2013, requesting $1.1 to $1.8 million in new study money from the water management district’s board, and that the department will respond to the city council’s requests for more information and action.
A slideshow summary of DEP’s Basin Management Action Plan, or BMAP, to restore seagrass in the Central Indian River Lagoon was presented to the city council Oct. 18 by Basin Coordinator Mary Paulic.
It stated, “The Central IRL is meeting seagrass depth targets . . . therefore, nutrient reductions beyond planned activities are not required of the stakeholders for the next five years.”
Council members reacted with anger to the presentation because, in reality, three ecological calamities have occurred in the lagoon since DEP received the data its plan is based on, killing a majority of seagrass in the area where the plan summary says it is doing well.
Troy Rice, director of St. Johns’ Indian River Lagoon National Estuary Program, says approximately 63 percent of seagrass in the Indian River County stretch of the lagoon has been lost in the last two years.
“To wait for another five years [to deal what is happening now] is frightening,” said Pilar Turner, a councilmember and mayor at the time of the October presentation.
Councilmember Tracy Carroll told Paulic an environmental disaster is unfolding and asked that she do something to accelerate updated evaluations of the lagoon’s health and spur action to save the estuary.
“You need to impart a sense of urgency to your superiors and get some experts in here to figure out what is going on.”
Paulic said she would take the council’s concerns back to Tallahassee, but Carroll says she has not heard anything from DEP in the months since then.
Bartlett says Paulic did brief her immediate supervisors after the meeting and that they informed him of the council’s concerns.
“We will get back to them,” he promised. “I can’t say exactly when because I don’t know when their next meeting is, but we will respond, either in writing or in front of the council.”
Bartlett says that while the slideshow language was unclear, there are good reasons to proceed with implementation of the five-year Basin Management Action Plan.
“It locks in place all the commitments governments up and down the lagoon have made [to reduce nutrient pollution]. It does not mean we aren’t continuing to look for additional ways to reduce nutrients.”
Paulic’s plan summary stated in one place that seagrass growth in the lagoon will be reevaluated in 2017, but Bartlett says it will actually be assessed much sooner.
DEP provides money to St. Johns for seagrass mapping and Rice says he is putting together a proposal for a new round of mapping in the coming year.
The lagoon was last mapped in 2011 prior to mass seagrass losses.
The first and largest of the environmental calamities DEP’s plan does not clearly factor in was the 2011 super-bloom of algae in the northern lagoon, a nutrient-fed, oxygen-consuming growth of phytoplankton larger and more long-lasting than any seen before that clouded the lagoon and killed 40 percent of the seagrass, which needs sunlight to thrive.
Next came the ongoing brown algae bloom in Brevard County, which Paulic herself called “unprecedented” when questioned by Carroll, and the die-off of all seagrass in Indian River County north of the Barber Bridge.
Since seagrass is the foundation of lagoon ecology, its loss threatens birdlife, bottlenose dolphins, manatees and green sea turtles, which mature in the estuary’s sheltered waters before braving the Atlantic.
Most resident game fish are already gone from the area north of Barber Bridge, according to lagoon scientists and longtime fishermen.
Unless the causes of algae blooms and seagrass loss can be understood and reversed, the lagoon could change from the most bio-diverse estuary in North America, supporting 4,200 species, to a sterile water body with few fish or marine mammals.
In June, working in conjunction with DEP, St. Johns put together an emergency response group of scientists to try and figure out the cause or causes of the super-bloom.
When the brown algae came along the group dilated its focus to investigate that event.
Rice says the group is also studying the most recent loss of seagrass between the Barber Bridge and the town of Grant, which is mysterious because water in that stretch is clear, conditions that normally favor sea grass.
Up until now the study group has functioned without funding. St. John’s, DEP, Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute, University of Florida, Smithsonian Marine Station at Ft. Pierce and other institutions have provided scientists who work on a volunteer basis.
Now, in the face of a continuing emergency, Rice says he will ask St. John’s governing board for money to expand the group’s investigations to try and figure out the causes and find solutions for seagrass loss.
“We will request between $1.1 and $1.8 million for studies over the next five to seven years,” he says.
The Vero Beach City Council will be glad to hear it as will State Senator Joe Negron.
“I personally have observed the seagrass has been destroyed in many parts of the estuary,” Negron says. “Conditions change in a regular basis and it is imperative to have the best, most up-to-date information about the lagoon. Few things are more important to this community than the protection of our estuary. It has an enormous impact on our economy and way of life.”
State Representative Debbie Mayfield agrees.
She says Kilroys, devices created by the Ocean Research and Conservation Association in Ft. Pierce, that measure water pollution and transmit data in real time, could help scientists figure out what is killing the seagrass.
“My thought would be to put these devices where the grass is dying to see what is there in real time,” says Mayfield, who is a member of the Agriculture & Natural Resources Appropriations Subcommittee.
She says the legislature may be able to provide additional money for the St. Johns group or other lagoon research.
