Sing it Loud!

Double rainbow over the Everglades

We were so close to calling our helicopter pilot yesterday and telling him to meet us at 9:00 AM instead of 7:00. Sometimes, all I want is another hour of sleep, to ignore the buzzing alarm which sounds at 4:00 AM for our helicopter sample days. Then I realize how much is at stake. This morning mother nature summoned the whole congregation and belted out to the heavens. How fortunate we are to be surrounded by such unpredictable beauty.

Torrential rains over Shark River Slough

Florida Forever 2011 Conservation Photography Calendar

The 2011 Florida Forever calendars just arrived and they are BEAUTIFUL! It is such a privilege to be among the 11 other nature photographers from around the state to be selected for this project. The calendar highlights 12 potential project sites for Florida Forever from around the state. Flipping through the pages, you get a real sense of the diversity of natural areas at stake. With enough public support, the Florida Forever program will remain a priority and we will have the chance to conserve and protect our natural heritage. The calendars make great stocking stuffers and gifts for friends and family as we come into the new year. Help spread the word of awareness and share the beauty of our fragile state!

Florida Forever 2011 Conservation Photography Calendar with cover by David Moynahan 

at Dickerson Bay.

If you would like a calendar, feel free to use the ordering system below, you do not need a PayPal account to do so. 

Florida Forever 2011 Calendar

1 Calendar $15.00 2 Calendars $30.00 3 Calendars $45.00 6 Calendars $90.00 10 Calendars $100.00

I was assigned to the hardwood uplands of Key Largo and had a wonderful time exploring and photographing this rare biome. A unique feature of this calendar, a caption below each photograph explains the ecological and social importance of each site and what is required to save it from development.

My photo in the calendar is of the endangered stock island tree snail found within
 Crocodile Lake Wildlife Refuge. 

Silence of the Fish

Heather Schorge lays out a board of rainwater killifish (Lucania parva) at the Tavernier Science Center

Biologists would make good serial killers. Not of the Jack the Ripper variety, but something more of a methodical, curious, and scientific brand like Anthony Hopkins’ character in Silence of the Lambs. Not because we enjoy killing people or animals, but because we enjoy studying them in great detail when they're not so squirmy. I’ve noticed a severe disconnect exists with biologists, like a synapse jostled loose which keeps separated the icky squishes and smells of dead things from the clean cut living world. We all know these people. They’re the ones who contemplate boogers - the ones that seem to originate in the frontal lobe of brain, and upon removal, essentially clear your sinus problem - they also pick scabs, covet long ingrown hairs, and with wide eyes, pop zits onto the bathroom mirror. Yes, they might wear a suit and tie to work, but they can’t wait to examine the chunk of earwax that tumbles off their shoulder onto their desk. 

An anatomy professor, my sweet little mom is a shining example of this double agent lifestyle. She may be pulling out one of her famous corn bread pies from the oven in her disarming apron, but just behind her warm smile and delicious baked goods rest eight pig hearts hardening in the freezer next to the Flintstone’s Push Pops. Things that would make an ordinary person's skin crawl are and were a topic of conversation at our dinner table, if not the center piece - quite literally actually, as my brothers and I have all been sewn up on the kitchen table from various injuries. Growing up, it was not uncommon for her to bring up stories during a meal about her newest cadaver. My dad, an OBGYN doctor, would ever so hypocritically gag, changing the subject to c-sections or something more appropriate like venereal diseases. Neither of which, I might add, went very well with meatloaf.

Clown goby (Microgobius gulosus) swallowing a rainwater killifish (Lucania parva) just before dying. 

We have to measure and weigh both of them, even when partially digested.

While this sort of environment could easily damage a young child, it only helped to develop my high tolerance for gross things. One day, my mom brought home a bloody pair of cow lungs attached to a rubber tube to show me how they expanded and contracted when she blew on the other end. Fascinated, I immediately carried the soft, heavy pluck over to my next-door neighbor’s house. Hiding behind a buttress I rang the doorbell and laid the bloody heap on their welcome mat. When the mother, Wee Ching, answered the door, I blew into the tube and shared with her one of the many miracles of anatomy. Not so impressed by the pulsing gob of veins and cartilage, she slammed the door screaming something desperate in Chinese. It’s always been like this. I try to bring others to the threshold of my biological discoveries only to have them shut the door in my face.

In elementary school I was chastised for my dirty clothes. Not for the difficult stains, but for the wriggling lizard’s tails and daddy-long-legs bodies (which I meticulously separated from the legs) my mom would uncover in my pockets. Or the time in middle school when I was nearly grounded for borrowing her kitchen knives to dissect a toad, carefully compartmentalizing its organs in Tupperware containers in the fridge. Coming home from Honduras, I risked customs and smuggled my insect collection into the states, only to be scorned for the breaking the law. However, now, the colorful bugs are proudly displayed in our living room. And recently, my roommate in Wyoming complained the numerous sandwich bags of dried animal scat I collected were health hazards and general female deterrents.

A rotting tarpon head sits out near the scrap wood and water hose. One of my coworkers' treasures

from the field, this will be sure to rest on a mantle somewhere.

When I came to Tavernier last fall and stepped foot into the downstairs lab at Audubon, I finally found that long lost asylum where other like-minded explorers came to uncover secrets of the natural world. Shelves lined with vials of fish and other animals floating in formalin led to freezers stocked to the brim with birds, snakes, and anything else you might find in the Everglades. Jackpot!

A woodstork head has found refuge in the auto garage. 

In a biologist’s office, empty space is valuable real estate to put maps and skeletons of unfortunate creatures. The more exotic and rare the artifacts, the more accomplished the biologist. Who needs a metal paperweight when you can safely stack your documents under a monkey skull? These little treasures aren’t restricted to the lab or the offices either. When going to wash off your boots by the hose, make sure not to step on the massive tarpon face, which has been decaying for a good part of the year. Oh, and if you need some brake fluid for the truck, it should be on the shelf in the garage right next to the preserved woodstork head.

Michelle Robinson measures some day one goldspotted killifish (Floridichtys carpio) 

This summer I had the chance to put my so-called seasoned tolerance to the test. We are in the field eight months out of the year. Four of those months, then, are dedicated to processing the data in the lab. Data, in this case, means dead fish. And processing means thawing, identifying, measuring, weighing, and counting. We study the fish populations in terms of seasonality to determine population densities in relation to water depths and salinities. Some days we come back with forty fish, some days we come back with thousands. No need to worry though; these minnows are the prey base for the wading birds and they fornicate more than rabbits.

A typical summer sample board of over 400 rainwater killifish waits to be processed.

Since starting in November of 2009 I had been warned about summer in the lab. Horror stories of stifling temperatures and ungodly smells. Mountains of juicy Gambusia (mosquito fish) and slimy eels, their skin peeling off like burn victims. Yes, it would be an unforgettable summer. Upon thawing my first site and opening the Ziploc bag, I nearly vomited. I was struck with the same disbelief as when driving down the interstate and the lingering aroma of a paper mill wafts into the air conditioner. How could anyone get used to this wretched stench? I tried everything. I wore a surgical mask, when that didn’t work I sprayed the inside with lavender perfume which proved more caustic than the dead fish. I tried breathing through my mouth but my nose started to hurt after the second hour. Eventually by the third week, olfactory fatigue set in and by mid July I was eating chips and pizza at the lab table, as if the fish were my dinner guests.

The first sheepshead minnow (Cyprinodon variegatus) is a Day 1 fish.

The others that follow are varying degrees of Day 2 sheepshead minnows. 

If only this blog were scratch and sniff. 

The summer sample months of April and June prove the most unnerving to sort and i.d. When we go out into the field we have two days of sampling. The first day, the fish are fresh and recently dead and we quickly put them on ice to preserve them as well as we can. By the second day, however, the fish we missed the first day have been exposed to the blazing sun, warm water, and crabs, which enjoy picking at their stomachs. Day two fish, as they are called, exact their revenge by taking the form of scaly globs and we must pick through the masses to find their severed heads and tails.

Thawing a fish popsicle. It's hard not to try and give these little

guys voices and names with all those frozen expressions and personalities.

While this may sound miserable, we find ways to enjoy ourselves. My favorite prank is placing a day two fish on the rim of someone’s Coke, primarily Erin’s, because she never notices until the last minute. Eighteen years have passed since dumping the cow lungs on Wee Ching’s doorstep, and I’m still the biologist I ever was. This time, however, I can put it on my resume. 

5 Hour Soul Energy

A bottlenose dolphin breeches the water in the Florida Bay. 

I've never been good at sleeping. I'm not an insomniac, just sometimes my mind kicks into 5th gear around 1:00 AM. This last Wednesday, wide awake at four in the morning, I dreaded the 5 AM wake up call for sample day. After three months of office work, getting back into the field with an hour of sleep proved a poor decision. I made plenty of mistakes and took severely longer than usual getting back into the swing of things. Tired, frustrated, and overheated, all I wanted was my bed.

Just when I had thrown in the towel, day dreaming of air conditioning, our massage chair, and jersey sheets, I spotted a pod of six bottlenose dolphins. The previous week, Luis Canedo taught me how to summon nearby dolphins simply by giving them a playground. Trimming up the motor and revving the engine, I created the largest wake possible behind our 17' Mako. Immediately, the dolphins changed directions and began drafting our boat, jumping and spinning in the waves.

Lucky, lucky, lucky. I have no idea if I'll ever get this close to a wild dolphin again.

For twenty minutes adrenaline took over and I felt as alert as ever. The high lasted until 2 AM that night as I edited the photos. Who needs energy drinks when you have the Florida Bay in your backyard? It just goes to show that even on the bleakest of days, nature can find a way to inspire, enrich, and awaken the soul.

Is it Worth It?

The modern digital photographer has thousands, if not tens of thousands of images stored on their hard drives. I'm one of the latter. Before adding another twenty or thirty photos to the vault I ask myself, is it worth it? Will I use this photo? The very idea of unpacking my camera bag, changing lenses, composing, exposing, and working the subject until I get the shot is sometimes enough to trigger a complacence so grand it can only be mistaken for arrogance. "Oh, another barred owl? I've got one of those."

It seems like such a simple task - pulling out a camera, pointing, and shooting, but laziness is a devout polygamist and married to any number of excuses. The light is wrong. I don't want to get my camera wet. It'll be gone by the time I'm ready to shoot. The camera will just be a burden to bring along. My brand of indolence tends to walk hand in hand with familiar places. Once I've made a substantial portfolio of a particular location, I become increasingly picky as to what I will shoot. This blatant hubris never seemed so clear to me until last week when a friend, Garl Harrold, called to report he found a juvenile southeastern five-lined skink and would hold on to it so I could take pictures. I stammered on the phone, trying to be polite while dropping subtle clues that he shouldn't have gone through the trouble for something so common as a skink. "No really, Garl, you shouldn't have gone through the trouble..."

When I came into work the next morning, a water bottle containing a small lizard was sitting on my desk with a note from Garl. It sat there for half the morning haunting me, whispering to me, now you owe it to him, Mac. As we all know, guilt is a formidable force. Even laziness, with its posse of vindications, is no match for a guilty conscience. With heavy steps I carried the skink down to the lab and the gears started to turn. Suddenly, I had an assignment. Placing it on a piece of porcelain I used a strobe to blow out the background and hold fast to color. During the ten minutes of trying to keep the wiggling reptile on the porcelain, the once burden became a challenge, and the common skink evolved into an other-worldly creature. So excited by the outcome, I immediately rushed home to upload the image onto my computer.

I owe it to Garl for rekindling my artistic wonderment of nature, which is the whole reason I started photography. Now, the first thought isn't "is it worth it?" Instead, it's, "will this be fun?"

A Southeastern Five-lined Skink (Eumeces inexpectatus) shot in various positions on porcelain 

and merged into one frame. 

Happy Labor Day Weekend!

Labor Day sunset off the Florida Bay in Islamorada

I can't think of a better way to spend Labor Day weekend than watching the Gators win, however sloppy, their first home game. The only thing that could top that of course would be a smooth paddle under a vibrant sunset. Behind me, from the balcony of a bayside home, a family yelled over a bull-horn "Happy Labor Day weekend!" to all the passing boats. I guess I wasn't the only one enjoying the wonderful view.

The Road to Restoration

When I picture South Florida development in the early twentieth century, Pixar’s Toy Story comes to mind. Specifically that scene where the twisted neighborhood menace, Sid, blows up his toys and then haphazardly puts them back together. The result, a tangled mess of limbs and appendages painfully trying to pass as functioning toys. Throughout the carnage, his parents, the supposed voices of reason and control, are nowhere to be seen. Looking at a map which highlights all the canals and modified waterways of South Florida, early Floridian pioneers' lofty goals were not so far from the misguided endeavors of our animated friend. And you have to ask yourself, where were Florida’s voices of reason in all of this?

It’s no mystery that the hydrology of the state is completely off-kilter. In fact, the state of Florida is now spending hundreds of millions of dollars to right the wrongs of unabashed development along vital wetlands. A complex mosaic of private and public lands lead from the headwaters of Lake Okechobee down to the southern tip of Florida through what was once called “the river of grass.” These little puzzle pieces are more than just parcels of land and obstructions to water flow; they represent interest groups that run the gamut from Native American tribes, to farmers, to generations of families. Difficult doesn’t even begin to describe the immensity of the challenges that the state faces to restore the Everglades. Little by little, however, South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) is starting to tackle the problem of inadequate freshwater flow into the historic watershed.

To break it down as simply as I can, freshwater was diverted away from South Florida in order to drain what would become fertile land for agriculture. This water would then go either to the cities or out to the ocean. Losing a significant amount of freshwater would then allow saltwater to creep in and destroy habitat for wading birds, fish, and plant life along the coast. Our studies with National Audubon are to prove this shift and thus shape policy to get more freshwater back into the system. More freshwater means more aquatic vegetation, which means more fish, which then means more birds.

Map courtesy of SFWMD shows the C-111 canal and its proximity to Taylor Slough. 

The green area represents Everglades National Park.

One of the major canals that we are concerned with is called the Aerojet Canal, aka the C-111. In the 60s Aerojet dug the C-111 in order to ship massive space shuttle engines (21ft in diameter, too large for trains) out to Biscayne Bay and then up to Canaveral. Just before it could start manufacturing the engines, however, NASA pulled the contract and went with a smaller, less expensive engine, leaving South Florida with this canal. The C-111 is important for Everglades restoration because it draws a significant amount of freshwater from the ground and diverts it away from its historical path along Taylor Slough.

Last week, Tavernier Science Center was invited to go out to the C-111 spreader canal project site to see what three years of planning, 25 million dollars, and our research was going towards.

Workers spread concrete in 50ft sections along the C-111 spreader canal project.

SFWMD exploded a hole in the limestone bedrock to build this pump station. They have to drain the

water in four foot increments then patch the leaks until they get down to the 11-foot thick concrete base

which they poured while completely underwater. 

Project manager Sam Palermo, gave us a tour of the site and explained how the spreader canal project would redirect water from the C-111 and spill over into Taylor Slough. Two pumps bring water (100,000 gallons per minute) from the C-111 down the lined channels into the retaining cells instead of rushing out to the ocean. SFWMD would then backfill the remaining C-111 canal in order to stop it from draining surrounding lands. The idea seems simple enough, although water management in Florida has never been an easy task. Sam, with years of experience improving the headwaters of Lake Okechobee, states that it's taken a long time to get the project through legislation so they've had ample time to work out the kinks. 

A map of the Areojet waterway and pump station shows the beginning of the second phase of construction.

We are all very excited and optimistic to start noting the hydrological changes once this project is completed in July of 2011. If this program succeeds, it just might be the impetus to trigger more large-scale projects farther north. I am amazed at how much money and time it costs to undo the ill-conceived plans of Florida’s corporate expansion, but hopeful, because at least we are spending the time and money. 

Sunday Sunset

Sunset from Islamorada over the Florida Bay

As hurricane Earl pulses northbound along the Greater Antilles, the Florida Keys receives warning signs that storm season has begun. Albeit later than usual, temperatures are holding at a balmy 95 degrees providing ample heat to turn a tropical storm into a hurricane. In the meantime, from a safe distance, I'll look out my windows at the sunset, metal shutters packed away, enjoying how the sinister cumulus mountains turn into harmless tufts of cotton candy.

Every Spoonbill Counts

A close bond exists between the different conservation groups and agencies in the Florida Keys. National Audubon coordinates with the FWC, the Everglades National Park, and recently, the Wild Bird Center of Key Largo. As you know, we have been studying the roseate spoonbills as indicators for overall Everglades restoration efforts; thus, every spoonbill counts. So when we got a call from the Wild Bird Center that they had been rehabilitating a juvenile spoonbill, we grew very interested to track its progress.

Vered Nograd, the hospital director with a recuperated spoonbill

The spoonbill arrived at the Wild Bird Center about a month ago weighing 900 grams, totally emaciated and plagued with hookworms. Somehow, the bird had separated from its group and unable to find optimal foraging grounds in the Keys it barely survived. Vered Nograd, the director of the Wild Bird Center hospital, helped nurse the spoonbill back to health, nearly doubling its weight to 1750 grams, and last Wednesday they decided it was ready to be released back into the park. 

Takeoff! The rest of the spoonbills are just in the distance.

Pete and I took off from Tavernier across the Bay to meet Vered and her assistant, Suzie Roebling, at a favorable spoonbill foraging site. Within minutes of releasing the bird, it flew off to a stand of mangroves and preened itself twenty yards from the other spoonbills. After a good grooming, it built up the courage and flew over to its new group. Only moments after, we watched it catch its first fish. Success!

"Spooner" as they called him, ready to join his new friends in the shallows

Sure, it’s just one spoonbill and the Wild Bird Center spent lots of money providing the medicine, fish, and time to nurse this one bird back to health. But the gesture alone of caring for, protecting, and ensuring the future of this one bird provides a perfectly tangible example of the level of commitment required to protect such a fragile and important ecosystem. 

Vered and Suzie's first spoonbill release! Mission accomplished!

Florida Bay Lightning

Bolts of lightning rain down on coconut palms lining the Florida Bay

A month has passed with fickle summer weather bringing electric storms barreling off the tip of Florida. Since I got here I've imagined images of lightning strikes over mangrove swamps or dwarf cypress, but I haven't managed to be in the right place at the right time.

A 7-image stitch reveals a panoramic of a storm system brewing off of Cape Sable.

Taking the time to learn how storm systems build and travel is starting to pay off. I now keep an active report on my phone to track weather patterns so I can quickly hop in my car or kayak to follow a promising lead. Needless to say, this system isn't full-proof and I've spent countless hours patiently awaiting the supposed downpours with my camera in waterproof gear, only to have the storm split and go directly around me. It's unpredictability is humbling and frustrating, but it would be short-sighted to denounce the very character that I've come to love about nature photography.

These clouds move fast, which you can see by the blurred top portion during a ten second exposure.

You can imagine my excitement then, when the hard work pays off. This past Wednesday on my way back from Key Largo, I noticed a dark cloud bank off the northwest corner of the Florida Bay. I checked my phone and saw the deep crimson blobs surrounded by green heading southeast towards Tavernier. Speeding home, I grabbed my camera, a headlamp, and a kayak and went straight for a shallow mangrove patch I scouted a month prior.

I paddled out 15 minutes from the ramp near my house and made it just in time for the peak of the light show. I ran a few test exposures before setting up my camera for a 4.5 minute exposure in order to capture multiple strikes while balancing the light in the foreground without the use of external strobes. When the image finally processed and I looked at the LCD, all that pent up frustration of failed attempts vanished, instantly.

 Light show on Florida Bay.