Beach report - St. George Island, FL

Connie and I drove over to St. George Island yesterday, and miraculously we didn't get rain there. Kind of disappointed in the beach as it was pretty much covered with matts of unsightly brown and ratty looking seaweed. And we could see more coming in with every wave. The junk was literally everywhere. Would not have been very much fun trying to swim in those waters with all that junk in there.

I've been watching the beach lately just to see if that oil spill is having any effect, and I'm not sure I believe all the hype I read about everything being just honky dory. For one thing, this time if year I think the Gulf waters should be teeming with schools of small fish. Nothing. In areas where the ebbing tide was leaving pools of water on the beach, normally they would have small fish trapped there, but I saw NONE at all. Normally we would see zillions of coquinas digging down into the sand after being disturbed by every incoming wave. I saw NONE. Even sand crabs were not to be seen, but I did see a few of their burrows, so SOME must still be there. Birds were there on the beach, but nothing at all like I remember seeing in the past. No fish jumping in the water, and we only saw one spot where it appeared that birds were feasting on a small school of fish out past the sand bar.

Otherwise the water looks fine. Smells fine. No odor of oil or other chemicals that were used as dispersants that I could tell. But honestly, it just is not the same. Walking the beach I got the feeling of being at a funeral wake and not the Gulf of Mexico that should be teeming with life bursting at the seams this time of year. Heck, now that I think of it, we did not see one single solitary dead fish laying on the beach. Normally there should be some, but there were absolutely NONE anywhere. In my opinion, SOMETHING is going on, and I don't believe it is good at all.

Sigh......

Oh, there was one notable bright spot that day. In all the years Connie and I have been going to St. George Island, we have NEVER, EVER found a petrified shark's tooth. Until this trip. I was astonished! I've found plenty of them at Manasota Key Beach, Englewood, and Venice Beach, but NEVER found one in this area. And it is a pretty darn nice one, to boot.



But on the other hand, kind of sad that the highlight of the walk on the beach was finding something from an animal that has been dead for millions of years.

Thanks for that report. I have suspected for about a year that the Gulf was seriously damaged by the Corexit, and not too long ago there were reports that the shrimp and some other sea critters were found to be deformed.

Between the Fukushima / Pacific Ocean fiasco, and the poisoning of the Gulf, I have given up sea food all together.

Yeah, my wife heard from some people over in Apalachicola that they were catching shrimp with no eyes, and blue crabs without any claws. Personally I don't know how either of them could survive for long with such a handicap.

Be that as it may, coincidentally there was an article in the local Tallahassee newspaper today stating that there is a crisis with the oyster population. The article appeared to be dancing on eggshells trying to spread the possible causative agents to things OTHER than the corexit dumped into the Gulf of Mexico. But I think people at GROUND ZERO really know what has happened.

I'm going to be going down to southwest Florida shortly and am curious to see how things on the beaches there compare to when I was down there last year at this same time of year.

Went back out to St. George Island earlier in the week and wound up talking to a couple who were picking up tar balls off of the beach. They had found a pretty good amount of them. I hadn't even noticed them, as I wasn't even thinking about looking for them laying around.

The bird population is definitely down. And I believe it's because the lower levels of the food chain have been damaged. Just not seeing the coquinas and sand crabs that should be there. That stuff is in great abundance further south in the Gulf on Manasota Key, but here in the northern part of the Gulf, it appears to be a problem.

Something else perhaps noteworthy. When we were down in Manasota Key in September, the beach was littered with markers for sea turtle nests. Not so on St. George Island at all. There were NO markers present that I could see. Just struck me as rather odd.