Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Midnight Pass

I know I'm supposed to post pictures of the house today but I haven't had time. I still don't have time but a conversation I had with Tisra today made me think of this. I spent several weekends of my young life here catching fish- snook, trout, red snapper- and finding all sorts of odd things on the sea floor. Sea Urchins were my favorite but we found sea horses too. It was there that I learned that you could pull off one claw from a stone crab and toss it back into the water and the lost one would grow back. I also found out that a Sheepshead fish has teeth that look like human teeth.

Unfortunately in 1980 some wealthy homeowners who were concerned about losing their homes from beach erosion were able to persuade the court to let them plug the pass which has had a disastrous impact on the environment there. They ended up losing their houses anyway because when they plugged the pass it accelerated the beach erosion and because the water in the bay became stagnant it has polluted an area that used to be brimming with life and beauty. I was sad about it then and I still am.

3 comments:

Tisra said...

aww. how sad. Things like that leave me speechless.

Mary said...

Wow. That's incredible. It is sad, but to think how "bad information" can lead to such things is pretty scary. We should be so careful...not just the environment, but in so many areas.

Amy Button said...

Well, there is hope that they can reopen the pass. There is a petition in Tallahassee and they've done tons of research and it (according to the website) looks promising. I don't know if it will reverse all of the damage, for instance a rare species of clams has been lost there (we used to dig them up and use them for bait, who knew?) but hopefully time would help that. I've actually thought about taking a shovel and digging it out myself ;)