Gift-Wrapped in Water
The sea around us is our life-stream Beyond all things is the ocean. — Seneca
The well-being of all created life in our islands’ watershed requires taking care of the waters around us.
Being on the barrier islands of Sanibel and Captiva is a bit like standing on a paddleboard: We are literally living on a moving surface. Thinly stretched out on a water table like two life rafts of raw nature, these islands are completely vulnerable to the carving and shaping of a pair of sculptor’s tools called “wind” and “watershed.” We still have a lot to learn about the encircling currents of tide and flow—especially the effects caused by what we humans dump in them and the ways we change their natural course.
Not just coastal dwellers but all of humanity have been framed and fed by the water: (1) It lies behind us—earth’s early ocean was the birthplace of all life; (2) it sparkles around us—we are invited to work and play in/on/under it; (3) it flows within us—our salty blood and tears are chemically similar to the seawater of the ancient surf.
This liquid life-stream continues to sustain us: warming, feeding, cleansing, protecting, healing and warning. It’s no wonder that physicians rely on samples of our bodily fluids to determine the measure of our health and the appropriate means of treatment to maintain or restore it. Individual wellbeing requires taking care of the waters within us. The wellbeing of all created life in our islands’ watershed requires taking care of the waters around us.
When rising up to get an aerial view of the Gulf Coast, a stunning tableau is revealed: The land and the water below are locked in a symbiotic embrace—married, “for better or for worse.” The higher you go the more it becomes clear that in South Florida what grows on the land depends on the water and what grows in the water depends on the land; as Lake Okeechobee goes, so go the tributaries east and west and the Everglades to the south.
As a child I was told that watermelon is the only food that you can eat, drink, and wash your face in at the same time. As an adult living in Southwest Florida I am learning that our watershed, like the watermelon, can be a renewable source of food, drink and cleanliness—or not (as was the case when we were inundated with blue-green algae and red tide in the late summer of 2018).
Fortunately, our island citizens and elected officials are sharing in a vigorous statewide effort to address water quality. The Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation’s Marine Lab, long a powerhouse in research and monitoring, continues to maintain floating stations (think “mobile blood tests”) for the sake of all the creatures, great and small, land and sea, bound together in this biological web. Armed with a new state-ofthe-art vessel, the lab will be part of a huge multi-institutional National Science Foundation grant to study the interaction of red tide and blue-green algae and the nutrients that feed them. Now that’s something worth supporting.