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| Red Mangroves building an island |
Red mangroves build land by sending out stabilizing aerial
prop roots into shallow water that collect sand and other debris.
As the trees grow in size, so do the islands
they are creating.
These mangrove
islands ranging in size from one small mangrove tree to a very large island, are
vital parts of the diverse and important ecosystem of the Everglades National
Park.
Tiny fish and other creatures grow
in the shelter of the root systems.
The
islands absorb some of the energy in dangerous storm surge, protecting nearby
coastal regions.
The area is known as Ten Thousand Islands, and starts at
Marco Island and runs southward on the Gulf Coast to the tip of Florida.
They are protected as part of the Everglades
National Park.
While the region is named
10,000 Islands, they estimate that there are actually 13,000 to 16,000 of these
important bodies of land.
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| Black mangrove straws |
Red mangroves are not the only types of mangroves in the
area. Black mangroves can be identified
by the pencil thin air straws they send up out of the mud, and white mangroves
have a tiny indentation at the tip of each leaf. The red mangrove roots are more salt
resistant than the other mangroves, so you see more of them starting up new
islands in the brackish water. The water
is here is brown, not from silt but from the tannin in the decaying mangrove
leaves.
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| White mangrove leaf - see the little indentation? |
We visited the area on a cold (for South Florida) and very
windy day. You access this part of the
national park by boat from tiny Everglades City. There is an NPS Visitors Center in a small
temporary building. The permanent
building was damaged in Hurricane Irma in 2017.
In that storm, the 14-foot storm surge that hit the outer mangrove islands,
was reduced to 8-feet by the time it got to the coastline. That is still a lot of storm surge and quite
a bit of Everglades City was damaged or washed away.
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| Those powerful red mangrove roots! |
From the Visitors Center you can take a boat or guided kayak
trip among the islands. Given the winds
and the cold, we opted for an afternoon trip in the motor boat.
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| Havana Cafe of the Everglades |
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| Lunch in the shade |
It was lunch time, so we drove a few miles down the road and
across a bridge to the tiny island and and fishing village of Chokoloskee, to eat
in the only restaurant on the island, The Havana Café of the Everglades. The area is the stone crab capital of the
world, so Russ had stone crab claws.
They only harvest the claws from the crabs and then return the crabs to
the sea where they can grow new claws. We
sat outdoors under a jumble of thatched roof, shady trees and umbrellas. Probably more perfect for a typical South
Florida day instead of the chilly day we were having.
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| Stone crab claws |
The boat tour was fabulous.
We got to see some of the mangrove islands up close, and enjoy the
interesting shore birds, cormorants and pelicans.
We came across a pod of bottlenose dolphins
feeding, with pelicans flying around and scooping up fish that the dolphins had
scared to the surface.
As we left, the
dolphins stopped eating long enough to play in the boat's wake.
Such fun.
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| The island is growing a sandbar |
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| These mangroves were killed by the storm surge in 2017, but their roots still hold precious land. |
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| Cold and windy |
