Water Quality: Ichetucknee Springs vs. The St. Lucie Estuary

Water Quality: Ichetucknee Springs vs. The St. Lucie Estuary

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I am almost too tired to be writing this, I had so much fun over the last four days. My wife’s family have a tradition of spending a long weekend riding tubes down the Ichetucknee River ever summer. In the 17 years that I’ve known her, we’ve only missed one year….and that was only so that our teenage daughter could join her team to play in the World Series….silly sports!

Toobin

To say that the Ichetucknee River is clear is an understatement. Video does it little justice, but short of going there and experiencing it yourself, its as close as you will get, unfortunately.

In the deep spots, the bottom looks to be only a few feet away, only to actually be 25 to 30 feet deep. If our local saltwaters were this clear, I’d call in sick every day, and spearfish non-stop. Probably a good thing I don’t live somewhere that offers saltwater with this level of visibility…

Anyhow, here is a video of me snorkeling. You can see how unaffected the fish are that people are passing over them.

 

Man, do I want to go spearfishing…. but our local waters are in such bad shape due to all of the freshwater being dumped that not only is the visibility almost zero, but the Health Department is issuing a “don’t go into the waters” notices everwhere. The good news though is that it is finally starting to cause political pressure. That is always a sure sign that the masses are unhappy, when people unite. Let’s hope that we can all accomplish something good with our local water situation.

 

Peace,
db

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5 comments:

    1. Your part of the world is a bit lacking on cell phone coverage for my carrier….I didn’t get your message until I was back in civilization…Part of the draw of going there was the lack of contact, ironically 😛

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