Link to video: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1E8o2TExGs&feature=em-upload_owner)
It is an amazing thing to fly through time and space, and this is exactly what I did yesterday with my brother, Todd. He took me on a “flight” over a 1958/Today St Lucie River, North Fork, and Ten Mile Creek. All the while, the images flashing in and out of past and present….Please watch this short video yourself by clicking the link or image above.
At one point along our armchair journey, I said to myself, “Wow, I don’t feel so great,” –just like sometimes when I am with Ed, my husband, in the airplane. I actually got motion sickness having plastered my face right up to the screen to see every moving detail!
A few deep breathing exercises put the feeling off, but next time I’ll take my Dramamine!
This flight, as the others you may have experienced on my blog with Todd, is amazing. It allows one to really see what the lands were originally like and how they have been developed as residential homes and endless agriculture fields.
Towards the end of the video, you can even see algae growing in the agriculture canals, off of Ten Mile Creek, St Lucie County–“bright green,” for all to see on Google Earth. I have witnessed these green canals too from an airplane.
Due to drainage canals— leading to drainage canals—leading to drainage canals, this water from the ag fields, and from all of our yards, ends up in the now sickly St Lucie River. This problem is exacerbated by ACOE/SFWMD releases from Lake Okeechobee and the basin area of C-44 in Southern Martin County. These canals and the expanded engineered runoff from the lands is what is killing our river.
It is my hope that with visuals like the video above, future generations will find a way, and want to be a part of a new water and land management generation “seeing” how to improve St Lucie River/Indian River Lagoon. Our generation seems stuck in a quagmire….
Like they say: “seeing is believing,” and seeing provides insight for change.
*Thank you to my brother Todd, for this incredible journey using overlays of aerial photographs taken in 1958 by the United States Government, and marrying these aerials over images from today’s Google Earth. (http://thurlowpa.com)
DEP: C-24 as part of the Central and Southern Flood Control Project 1950s:(http://www.dep.state.fl.us/southeast/ecosum/ecosums/c24.pdf)
*The yellow lines are today’s roads for reference; 91 is the Florida Turnpike built in the 50s and 60s.
If you go to Florida Memory Search Gallery (one the internet) then click on the web page with 6 pictures. At the top of the web page next to the words –Florida Memory– write the word COQUINA –then press search. This will help to exsplain what happened to the IRL. I like picture—GE 0126 . It was taken in 1910 and I am certain the conditions that formed this shore were the same for 150 miles. Notice the white new coquina clams at the bottom and how they are thrown up and out of the water. Being able to cut coquina to shape and build forts was the main reason the Spanish held on to Florida. Cannon balls would not shatter it like regular stone walls but would simply stick in it like a knife sticks in a large piece of chese.
I just came back from putting calcium beach sand at one of my many spots. Almost immediately milions and millions of menhaden minnows churn the water.Little artic turns make their precision dives to get a meal. I will do the same thing tomarrow at a different place.These menhaden are the biggest food source for our offshore fish. I would say by now that most of our creatures(and there are many) have calcium in their bones that came from the sand out my buckets. — La Chime