The Florida Keys Florida Keys – Images by Lee Foster by Lee Foster

Outdoor Pursuits in the Florida Keys Florida Keys – Images by Lee Foster by Lee Foster Bonefish Bob’s practiced fingers wrapped another strand of green thread around a hook shank destined to become one of the 4,000 fishing flies he tied each year. That day Bonefish Bob’s mission was to tie a few Clouser Minnow flies, his favorite lure for the bonefish, which abound in the Florida Keys, a string of coral islands extending southwest off the tip of Florida. “The bonefish is the most difficult fish on the planet to catch,” said Bonefish Bob, as he sat in an easy chair at his shop in the town of Islamorada, his fly-tying apparatus in front of him. “It’s really more like hunting than fishing. You spot the bonefish, then present the lure to it. You don’t eat this fish, of course. It’s all bones. Bonefishing is catch-and-release, pure sport.” Bonefish Bob’s thick white beard made one suspect he might be Santa Claus residing in Florida during the off-season. His shop personified tranquility, with its heirloom 80-year-old bamboo fly rods and turn-of-the-century Abercrombie & Fitch leather fly rod cases. If any anxiety intruded into the world of Bonefish Bob, it was his caring about the overall health of the ecosystem of the bonefish, the Florida Keys. “We’ve got to keep these clean waters healthy,” said Bonefish Bob, who also went by the name Bob Berger. “We’ve got a wonderful resource here, but we need to keep it clean. That means managing the nutrient-rich farm runoff in Florida and handling the human sewage in the Keys. These are the greatest fishing waters in the world. You can catch 25 species on the Atlantic side of the Keys and another 25 species on the Gulf of Mexico side.” Bonefish Bob completed tying his Clouser Minnow fly. The sun was sinking across the road from the shop. It was a good sunset, even by the Florida Keys’ demanding standards. Down the highway that links this island to the final island, Key West, the locals were probably applauding the sun setting, as is their custom. Another peaceful day had ended in Bonefish Bob’s town of Islamorada in the Florida Keys. Since the year of that encounter, Bonefish Bob has gone to his reward beyond this Earth. Hopefully, the fishing waters are bounteous where he now resides. Not every days is idyllic in Islamorada, which rests precariously on the edge of the sea, with the Gulf of Mexico on one side and the Atlantic Ocean on the other. Down the road a quarter-mile is a monument to the victims of the great hurricane of 1935. At that time a 17-foot tidal wave swept over the town and killed 578 people, who were assembled with the hopes of escaping the Keys, using the railroad. The railroad preceded the highway as a link between the islands, but the hurricane tossed the rail cars wantonly into the ocean, most likely frightening the bonefish, which are said to be skittish. Nature in the Florida Keys One of the best ways to immerse yourself in the natural world of the Keys is to take a kayak trip with an informed naturalist, as I did with Mosquito Coast Outfitters in Key West. The guide launched us from Geiger Key Marina, took us to the red mangrove forests, and served up the natural lore of the Keys. The guide’s own passion for the Keys included a scientific discipline in evaluating the ecosystem. Like many residents in the Keys, the guide believed more in education than regulation. Among the wondrous observations he shared with us were some fascinating facts about the plants, such as the red mangrove, the first tree to colonize these islands and the last that will disappear if sea waters rise inexorably in the projected future. Another intriguing plant is the turtle grass that grows in the shallows. Standing in the total saltwater environment on a remote island, my guide pulled up a small root, call the pith, of a turtle grass. He broke open the pith and sucked out the water. “The pith of the sea grass is 80 percent fresh water,” he said. “If you were dying of thirst out here, you could survive on sea grass.” Over the years the red mangroves have been harvested to make charcoal and for furniture production. Today they are protected. In evaluating the overall environmental risk to the Keys, my guide stressed a few salient issues. “Casarina trees are a terribly invasive plant here,” he said. “They were planted as windbreaks and quickly took off, suppressing the native plants. We’re now involved in widespread eradication of them.” Another of the delicate environmental problems here is the handling of human sewage. The rich nutrients in human wastes can seep through the porous soil, the “driftbank limestone formation” as the Keys are technically described. Nutrients overburden the natural system. Thrusting the human wastes into the soil with deep injection wells could present problems that, once apparent, would be impossible to eradicate because the nutrients would have permeated the ground. Nitrogen-rich agricultural runoff from Florida further exacerbates a nutrient- overburdened environment and promotes excessive algal growth. Algal bloom reduces water clarity and instigates a chain of undesirable effects. The reduced freshwater outflows from Florida rivers also inhibit the natural renewal process in the Keys. My guide took the long view of a geologist in seeing Man’s place in the Keys. “The sea has risen and dropped about 400 feet in the various cooling and warming periods of the past,” he said. “We’re now clearly in a warming period. Our own contribution to ongoing global warming, the current trend, may be incidental. We know the seas have risen 10-12 inches in the last 200 years. Real estate in the Keys will probably be unusable in a couple of centuries because of the rising waters.” My guide pointed out that the Poseidon satellite, put up in 1993, has been devoted to making the first accurate measurements of the rise of sea water. A kayaker can see many of the birds of the Keys, such as pelicans, osprey, herons, egrets, and frigate birds. However, the best place to see birds up close is at the Florida Keys Wild Bird Center in Islamorada. At this privately-funded facility, injured birds are treated and released or else kept on public display if they can’t be returned to the wilds. Here an observer can learn that the large white birds with black legs are egrets and those with yellow legs are great white herons. Other colorful residents include cormorants, with their sleek black bodies and emerald eyes set in orange cheeks, or roseate spoonbills, with their large shovel bills. Much of the Keys is now protected as part of a Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, one of many such entities in the U.S. One area of the Keys, Key Largo, already had years of experience as a National Marine Sanctuary. That was before the 1990 law that vastly increased the Keys sanctuary area to 2,600 square nautical miles, protecting primarily the 128-mile-long coral reef. The question is how to preserve the biological diversity of the Keys, the only tropical coral islands in the contiguous U.S. The goal is to preserve the resource while maintaining the diverse economy, much of it dependent on the environment, whether the user be a curious tourist, boater, diver, fisherman, or treasure hunter. Each group of users has its impact. For example, accidental boat groundings on the reef and anchor gouging of the coral have been ameliorated by better education of new boaters as to where the reefs are and by permanent placement of mooring buoys on the reef, eliminating the need to anchor. Florida Keys, kayaking in Florida Regulators managing the Keys have found their task difficult because of the anti- government mood, the skepticism and suspicion about government bureaucracy, the lack of past experience about zoning on water (as opposed to land), and the local distaste with efforts to regulate a major Keys industry, treasure salvaging. The Keys is also a complex human story with quizzical blends of often strict conservatives in the Upper Keys and proud liberals in the Lower Keys, where a sizable portion of the community is gay. Man in the Keys When the first Europeans arrived here, they found the unburied corpses of Arawak and Calusa Indians, the losers in local skirmishes, and named Key West “bone island.” Over the centuries, the Keys’ most noted industry has been wreck salvaging, as ships ran aground on the reefs. The most celebrated wrecks, of course, were the Spanish treasure ships that regularly left Havana bound for Spain and occasionally were blown off course by hurricanes and destroyed on the coral reefs. For centuries, one of these ships, the Atocha, haunted the imagination of treasure hunters. After two decades of searching, in 1985, Mel Fisher of Key West discovered the Atocha and a sister ship, the Santa Margarita, which went onto the reef in a hurricane in 1622. Fisher wrestled an estimated 400 millions of dollars in gold and silver coins, crosses, jewelry, plates, and precious-metal bars from the wreck. Today a visitor can see much of this treasure at the Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Society Museum in Key West. The gift shop sells some of the treasures as jewelry and as collector items. A visionary railroad builder, Henry Flagler, dreamed of running a railroad south from Miami to Key West, moving from island to island, mainly to take advantage of the Panama Canal trade that could be offloaded at this southernmost point in the U.S.

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