The ShoreXplorers: The Ten Thousand Islands of the Everglades National Park, Everglades City, FL

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.

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.

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.

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.

Havana Cafe of the Everglades

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.

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.