Marine and Coastal Field Experience - Blog 3

Every weekend my fiancé and I get on our jetski and find an adventure!  This past weekend we decided to launch our jetski at the Cocohatchee River Park boat ramp and we rode through the channels to Lover’s Key.  On our journey through the channels we came across so much wildlife, it was amazing!  The first thing I noticed that stood out was all of the mangroves.  I believe the mangroves in Wiggins pass are black mangroves and they were everywhere.  It was low-tide when we first went out, so we were able to see the roots very well.  While riding in the channels we saw so much life from the birds up in the sky to the manatees and dolphins in the water.  In Roberson’s textbook we learned about biodiversity, which describes the biological diversity of genes, species and ecosystems.  The more biodiversity there is in an ecosystem the more stable it will be.  When I saw all the different forms of life surrounding the channels it just showed how all these different animals and life forms work together.  In the estuary we saw a couple manatee for a brief moment but it was such an amazing moment.  From my experience I feel that the manatee stay pretty close to the channels floor and will only come up for a brief moment, but dolphins like to make their presence known!

Once we arrived to Lover’s Key we beached our jetski and walked around.  On the shoreline of the beach I sunk my hands into the sand where it was still wet and lifted my hands out of the sand and saw a large amount of tiny coquinas.  It is so interesting to watch the coquinas as they dig into the sand once they’re washed up on the shoreline to hid from birds so they don’t get eaten.  The coquinas made me think of a sentence in A Sense of Wonder, “For me the sight of these small living creatures, solitary and fragile against the brute force of the sea, had moving philosophic…”.  Although the author is talking about the crabs I feel the coquinas have a similar story because they are so small but they contribute to the large ecosystem of oceanic wildlife.  While walking along the shoreline at Lover’s Key we saw a mini forest of what appeared to be live oak that ran along the coast.  I go on these jetski adventures every weekend but had never paid such close attention as I did on this last one.  It had never crossed my mind all of the different species in the channels or ocean that all work together to make the ecosystem strong and stable.  I definitely recommend spending an afternoon in a kayak, jetski or paddleboard going in these channels because there is so much to see and learn!