Ocean Report: The Death of South Florida’s Reefs

“Wait until you see it further north,” Captain Craig Smart said. I surfaced from a dive about a mile south of the Boynton Inlet. The Atlantic Ocean reef was covered with algae. Most soft Gorgonian sea fan coral was dead. Sponges were covered with the stuff and suffocated. Hard corals had patches of white where they had been choked by the algae.

It was a wonder that any marine creatures could live on such a sparse reef devoid of life. In some areas, reef fish and crustaceans were not present, proving they couldn’t survive in the algae-coated mess.

A Private World

I have been diving on and monitoring the reefs of South Florida for the last 30 years. I dived here as a youngster and knew the glorious days of Florida. With few people, fewer in summer, parking was available along the ocean front. There was development certainly, but not to the extent there is today, where condos and houses form a private barrier to every beach save those isolated public bathing areas.

A Manalapan police officer on a four-wheeler demanded that a tourist get down off a rise in the beach. The older man was sitting peacefully, apparently contemplating.

Manalapan is one of those wealthy-only communities that, with its private police force, successfully keep beach access private. There is no parking and no public beach access. For any who would like to enjoy the privacy of the public beach, access is from Palm Beach County’s Inlet Park a mile or more south.

“I was just saying my prayers,” the older tourist said. He complied with the policeman’s demand to move. The authority was vested in the fact that private property is from the high-water mark. The patrolman’s lieutenant, according to the tourist that reported what he was told, saw him sitting there from the road, and got him to chase the invader away. There were otherwise no private homes in the area, only private beach front that some speculator intended to capitalize on.

Population Explosion

Everywhere else, South Florida resembles a parking lot. The influx of tourists swells the winter population. The influx of permanent residents has made Florida the third most populous state in the nation after New York and California, rivaling Texas.

Florida has a fragile environment. Flat as a pancake, covered with sand over a limestone substrate, and issued with swamps, the land is as porous as a sieve.

Residential immigrants desire lawns and exotic plants. They plant the land they don’t pave over. Acres are covered with nothing more than two inches of imported topsoil that holds grass. To keep grass alive in Florida, it must be fertilized, laced with weed control and pesticides, and then watered.

Developers have responded to the boom in Florida’s increased population by building into the Everglades in the western part of the state. “Buy that land,” my uncle told me. It was in the 1970s. A tract of five acres was for sale west of Military Trail off Boynton Beach Boulevard. The price: $1,500 an acre.

“No. It is swamp,” was my retort.

My “no” was unrehearsed. No one wanted to buy swampland. Scam artists went to jail for selling swamp to unwary investors who bought land via mail order. The five acres is part of a shopping center today, with many national chain stores and a supermarket.

There was and is money to be made in Florida in any real estate market. The blight will continue since there is a finite supply of land and continuing demand for it. Economic crisis or not, people continue to flock to Florida to either retire or move, hoping to find employment.

Wastewater

What does this have to do with the ocean? So there are rich people who keep visitors off their beaches with private police forces and no parking ordinances. So there are too many people. So there are parking lots, cars, and golf courses.

We recognize the fact that animal feed lots cause pollution. We see the torrential rains in Florida and see little signs on storm drains that warn: “Do not dump. Drains directly into Lake Worth.”

Put it together and you come up with the dilemma that is killing the reefs off South Florida’s coast. People release waste. Lots of people release lots of waste. Not only do we release personal waste from consumption, but we also release waste products containing chemicals unknown in nature. Much of this waste is high in nitrogen.

Animal production, sugar cane, and agriculture in the western part of the state produce significant amounts of waste. Much of this waste likewise contains nitrogen. Waste evaporates. It returns to Earth with every rainfall.

Huge canals that crisscross Florida are “water management” conduits. When water levels rise, and threaten to flood homeowners and businesses that have been built on fill over swamplands, water is released into the canals. Canal gates are opened and the wastewater flows into the Intracoastal Waterway. At tide change, the wastewater goes through inlets into the Atlantic Ocean.

Continued: The Issue in a Nutshell