Weather and Whatever - Episode 1 - Coastal Resilience, How Florida Fights Against A Changing Environment

Florida’s Gulf Coast is no stranger to hurricanes and environmental change- but it’s also no stranger to resilience.

In this very first episode of Weather and Whatever, I take you with me to Cedar Key and Tampa Bay to talk with scientists and community leaders about how they’re tackling shoreline erosion, water quality challenges, and seagrass loss. Turns out, the Gulf and the people who care for it are more resilient than we think. 

Transcript

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00:00:00 Jaina Botini 

Resilience is defined as the ability to withstand or recover quickly from difficulties. 

00:00:05 Jaina Botini 

So how does this relate to Florida's coasts? 

00:00:14 Jaina Botini 

Hello everyone and welcome to the Weather and Whatever podcast. 

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I'm your host, Jaina Botini. 

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I'm A broadcast meteorology student at the University of Florida. 

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And on this podcast, we will be talking about anything and everything from all kinds of weather to Florida living. 

00:00:28 Jaina Botini 

And I'm so excited to start this first episode. 

00:00:32 Jaina Botini 

Today, we are talking about coastal resilience and how communities around Florida are dealing with a changing environment. 

00:00:39 Jaina Botini 

Over the past couple of weeks, I have had the wonderful opportunity to travel to some locations on the Gulf Coast and talk with scientists, community members, and environmentalists about what actions are being taken, whether it be preventative measures or solutions to the multitude of issues that we are currently facing in the Gulf. 

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My first stop on this journey was in Cedar Key, Florida, where I met with Nature Coast Biological Station's Coastal Resilience Program Coordinator, Haley Cox. 

00:01:07 Jaina Botini 

I talked with Haley about what issues Cedar Key is facing when it comes to maintaining a resilient coast, and we actually got to see some of the impacts of hurricanes and coastal erosion along Cedar Key's shoreline. 

00:01:19 Jaina Botini 

So I'm going to pass it off to Haley to tell us more. 

00:01:23 Haley Cox 

Coastal erosion is a huge deal all over the world, but especially in Cedar Key, for these small coastal towns, it's a priority issue. 

00:01:34 Haley Cox 

So it's something that 

00:01:36 Haley Cox 

There's a lot of buy-in, not just from the residents, but from local government to try and find a solution to stop this erosion from happening. 

00:01:47 Haley Cox 

And obviously, you know, as time has gone on, I think there's been more focus on storm impacts in particular. 

00:01:56 Haley Cox 

And a lot of times, if I could say one thing about having to deal with all of the upset that 

00:02:05 Haley Cox 

hurricane season causes in Florida, I think one of the kind of silver linings is the focus that it puts on these types of resilience issues. 

00:02:17 Haley Cox 

So this road here, Airport Road, sustained some pretty severe damage. 

00:02:25 Haley Cox 

And one of the things to keep kind of in the back of your mind is that Cedar Key is an archipelago. 

00:02:32 Haley Cox 

So it's 

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kind of an interconnected chain of islands. 

00:02:36 Haley Cox 

And the people that live out here, if this road is impassable, if that bridge goes down, they are completely cut off. 

00:02:45 Haley Cox 

And there's only one way in and out on Archer Road. 

00:02:49 Haley Cox 

So it's really important for connectivity and the transportation network to have these roads usable throughout hurricane season. 

00:02:59 Haley Cox 

Essentially, that concrete apron there that we just stepped down 

00:03:04 Haley Cox 

that was all the way down to the edge of the shoreline. 

00:03:09 Haley Cox 

And any type of hardened infrastructure like that, it's really vulnerable at what we call the toe. 

00:03:16 Haley Cox 

So like the base of that concrete apron was constantly being undermined by daily wave action, you know, tidally influenced stuff, but also anytime a storm would come through. 

00:03:30 Haley Cox 

It would take out tons of sand, and there was essentially like nothing behind it, and it was just sort of perched there, making the road really vulnerable to wash out and things like that. 

00:03:42 Haley Cox 

So the main focus there is to protect this transportation infrastructure. 

00:03:49 Jaina Botini 

Wow. 

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So Cedar Key is aiming their efforts at shoreline erosion from rising sea levels, as well as hurricane impacts, and also just hurricane impacts in general. 

00:03:59 Jaina Botini 

Being 3 to 4 miles into the Gulf, it creates opportunity, unfortunately, for some pretty severe damage on such a small island, and finding ways to mitigate those effects are so, so important. 

00:04:12 Jaina Botini 

In my next episode, we're going to go deeper into how they are implementing some different buffers to limit these concerns. 

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But next, we're going to take this a little more south down to Tampa Bay. 

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Tampa Bay was my next location I traveled to, and I got to visit the Tampa Bay Estuary Program. 

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So let's hear from Sheila Scolaro, who is the community program scientist at the Tampa Bay Estuary Program. 

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I talked to Sheila about how Tampa Bay is experiencing some seagrass loss in certain areas of the bay. 

00:04:42 Jaina Botini 

And her and her team at the Tampa Bay Estuary Program are deploying temperature loggers to find out if an increase in water temperatures in the bay could be what's causing that seagrass loss. 

00:04:53 Jaina Botini 

So let's find out what that indicates about not only salinity levels in the bay, but also what it could mean for the ecosystems that thrive there. 

00:05:03 Sheila Scolaro 

One of the things that we know is that the bay is getting warmer and fresher. 

00:05:09 Sheila Scolaro 

And so seagrass, like all other plants and animals, have like an optimal temperature range that they can exist in. 

00:05:18 Sheila Scolaro 

So we think that high summertime temperatures in these really shallow seagrass beds might be contributing to some of the seagrass loss. 

00:05:26 Sheila Scolaro 

So Old Tampa Bay is very, very shallow. 

00:05:30 Sheila Scolaro 

And so the water gets really hot during the summer. 

00:05:35 Sheila Scolaro 

So we have designed a project to deploy 6 temperature sensors in Old Tampa Bay. 

00:05:43 Sheila Scolaro 

Three of the sensors go in locations where there has been continued seagrass loss. 

00:05:50 Sheila Scolaro 

And then three sensors will go in areas where there is stable seagrasses. 

00:05:58 Sheila Scolaro 

And so we will deploy those. 

00:05:59 Sheila Scolaro 

We leave them for about 5 to 6 days. 

00:06:03 Sheila Scolaro 

And then we come back and pick them up and download the data and then send it back out the next week. 

00:06:08 Sheila Scolaro 

So the idea is that we're gaining some information about what the temperature is in areas of seagrass loss and in areas where there's continued like stable seagrasses. 

00:06:21 Sheila Scolaro 

And then are those temperatures within seagrass optimal growing range 

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or are they outside of that? 

00:06:29 Sheila Scolaro 

And then is there differences between the temperatures where there's seagrass loss and temperatures where there's continued seagrass stability? 

00:06:38 Sheila Scolaro 

Most of the like water quality and the temperature and salinity readings that are done are done in deeper waters. 

00:06:46 Sheila Scolaro 

So it's outside of that like really shallow seagrass areas that we're really targeting and where we've seen most of the loss. 

00:06:54 Jaina Botini 

That is a really interesting study that they're doing out there in the bay. 

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And I actually got to go in the water and see them deploy one of the loggers. 

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So that was super cool. 

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And I'm really excited to see the results from that and see if that temperature increase is actually affecting the seagrass. 

00:07:12 Jaina Botini 

But in my third episode, we're going to talk about efforts in Tampa Bay that are going to answer these questions and find out more about the seagrass loss the bay is experiencing, as well as decreased water quality that they've already seen there. 

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in the past. 

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After talking with so many scientists, I have found a common denominator in all of their words, and that is that the Gulf, the coastal communities that surround it, and even some species that are very important to the Gulf are resilient. 

00:07:40 Jaina Botini 

And I think this statement is so important because it highlights the fact that when we see these issues arise in the Gulf and maybe the numbers aren't where we want to see them, we're like, wow, how can we as just regular people help such a large scale issue? 

00:07:58 Jaina Botini 

And you actually can, because we've seen the Gulf come back during hard times in the past. 

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And every aspect that surrounds the Gulf has already proven its resilience 

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time and time again from past issues. 

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In my next episode, we are headed back to Cedar Key to find out how a small coastal community is conquering these big issues on the shore. 

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I hope you are intrigued by these coastal concerns, and I cannot wait to hear how researchers are aiming to provide solutions in my upcoming episodes. 

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Thank you so much for tuning in to the first episode of Weather and Whatever. 

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Rain or shine, it's Jaden Botini, and I will talk to you next time. 

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Bye! 

silience, How Florida Fights Against A Changing Environment