But the relentlessly rising sea of the past 10,000 years has belittled drought, fire, hurricane, and frost as it slowly inundated this land 3 inches each hundred years. In compensation, the [mangrove] forest adds [peat] and rises with the sea. The sawgrass [marshes] retreat, and the mangrove ecosystem prevails essentially unchanged.
APPLE MUREX
A carnivorous mollusk that feeds on oysters.
Florida Bay and the Coastal Prairie
When you reach Flamingo, a former fishing village and now a center for visitor services and accommodations, you will be on the shore of Florida Bay. Here is an [environment] rich in variety of animal life, where porpoises play, the American crocodile makes its last stand, and the great white heron, once feared doomed to extinction, holds its own. The abundance of game fish in the bay has given it a reputation as one of the best sport-fishing grounds on the east coast.
The bay’s approximately 100 [keys] (low-lying islets) were built up by [mangroves] and provide foothold for other plants hardy enough to withstand the salty [environment] and the sometimes violent winds. The keys are also a breeding ground for water birds, ospreys, and bald eagles.
Florida Bay, larger than some of our States, is so shallow that at low tide some of it is out of water; its greatest depth is about 9 feet. The shallows and mudflats attract great numbers of wading birds, which feed upon the abundant life sheltered in the seaweeds—a plant-and-animal [community] nourished by nutrients carried in the waters flowing from the glades and [mangroves].
To the west beyond Flamingo is Cape Sable. This near-island includes the finest of the park’s beaches and much of the coastal prairie ecosystem. A fringe of coconut palms along the beach could be the remnants of early attempts at a plantation on the cape that did not survive the hurricanes; or it could be the result of the sprouting of coconuts carried by currents from Caribbean plantations and washed up on the cape. For a time, casuarina trees (called “Australian pines”), which became established on Cape Sable after Hurricane Donna, seemed to threaten the [ecology] of the beach. But these invaders were mostly removed in 1971, and now appear to be under control.
Examine the “sand” of this beach. You will discover that it is not quartz grains—but mostly minute shell fragments. Entire shells of the warm-water molluscs that live offshore also wash up on the beach. There are also artifacts that speak of Indian activity in this area in past centuries, curled centers of conch shells from which the pre-Columbian Indians fashioned tools, and numerous pieces of pottery (potsherds). Both shells and potsherds tempt the collector. Shelling—that is, the collecting of dead shells, for noncommercial purposes—is permitted. But Federal law prohibits the removal of even a fragment of pottery—for these are invaluable Indian relics, essential to continuing scientific investigation of the human history of the region.
