Last weekend, a series of impressive king tides, swelled by the full moon, rose our Gulf waters a foot or more higher above normal. In south Florida, sea water ran deep in the streets. But along our lightly populated coast, I noticed only submerged docks, from Lanark to Eastpoint. On St. Vincent Island, the king tides carved two long swales and filled them with salt Gulf water. The pool closer to the dunes was deeper, and had apparently entrapped an … Continue
Occupy Sandbar: That’s what shorebirds do, because only on the edges of our coastline can they live. Last week, birders and biologists all over Florida put their binoculars together to see how the original snowbirds are doing on their wintering grounds (which we mostly think of as “our” beaches and sandbars). It’s called the statewide Winter Shorebird Survey. My assigned territory required a kayak trip about a mile off shore to a set of linear, mostly submerged sandbars in Franklin … Continue