Copyright 1998 Palm Beach Newspaper, Inc.
The Palm Beach Post
March 29, 1998, Sunday, MARTIN-ST. LUCIE EDITION
SECTION: LOCAL, Pg. 1B
LENGTH: 733 words
HEADLINE: DEARTH OF PLANKTON, DEATH TO OTHER SPECIES?
BYLINE: Sally D. Swartz, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
BODY:
For shrimp and crabs, they're what's for dinner. So tiny
that you need a microscope to see most of them, plankton are crucial
to marine life in the St. Lucie and Indian rivers.
Snapper and other fish eat the shrimp, and pelicans, ospreys
and other birds eat the fish.
''Plankton are at the very base of our food chain,'' said Demma
Bailey, teacher at the Environmental Studies Center in Jensen
Beach, ''and they are disappearing from our estuary.''
Teachers and students have monitored the rivers for plankton
for 25 years, Bailey said. In daily tests at different sites throughout
both rivers in Martin County since March 2, they haven't found
any of the one-celled plants and larvae of crabs and shrimp.
''It's too soon to make a definitive statement about what this
could mean, but we're pretty horrified,'' Bailey said. ''It's
scary. We've always had spots where there was not as much plankton,
but we've never seen these kinds of results so consistently.''
Past studies have shown dramatic increases of plankton in the
rivers each spring, teacher John Wakeman said.
This year's absence of plankton coincides with the heavy releases
of fresh water from overflowing Lake Okeechobee into the rivers.
The fresh water coursing to the ocean blows the salt water out
of the rivers, threatening the survival of ocean species that
live in the brackish inland waters.
El Nino's rains throughout Central and South Florida have filled
the lake 4 feet above normal. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers,
trying to lower the lake before hurricane season starts so residents
won't face flood danger, is releasing 4 billion gallons of fresh
water a day into the rivers.
Mullet and several species of ocean fish began turning up with
sores, tumors and lesions March 2. Scientists have identified
a microscopic algae, Cryptoperidiniopsis, that was found in the
St. Johns River during a similar outbreak of fish lesions last
year.
Fishermen complain the fresh water has flushed game fish from
the rivers. Pelicans and other birds are dying of starvation and
some have been found with lesions.
Health officials have warned people not to eat or handle the
sick fish or swim in waters where they're found.
Anchored less than a mile from the St. Lucie Inlet one day
last week, sixth-graders from Stuart Middle School worked with
Bailey, Stuart Middle School teacher Lois Lynch and Rick Binder,
who captains the center's boat, the Sea Scout.
The group used a special net to try to gather plankton samples,
carefully disinfecting their hands after contact with the waters.
Binder held up the clear vial at the bottom of the net. Some
days the container ''looks like New York City,'' Binder said,
but this day it is empty.
''On an incoming tide, we should have seen some plankton,''
Bailey said. ''But the fresh water is gushing out so fast, it
keeps the good stuff from coming in.''
The students and teachers also test the waters for salt content
at differing depths, turbidity, oxygen levels, temperature and
color, and scoop up samples of the bottom at each site.
The groups have tested at 156 sites in 52 days on the water
this year.
Mary Rice, director of the Smithsonian Marine Station in Fort
Pierce, said scientists visiting the area sometimes study specific
types of plankton, but ''we're not looking at plankton in general,
and the last few weeks we haven't had anyone looking at plankton
at all.''
Rice said the Smithsonian has no information that confirms
or refutes the Environmental Studies Center's observations, but
said the changed salt levels in the rivers could affect plankton.
Carmelo Tomas, scientist with the Florida Marine Research Institute
in St. Petersburg, said the lack of plankton in the estuary could
be temporary.
If record rainfalls and heavy releases of fresh water continue,
however, the kinds of plankton in the waters could change from
salt to fresh water species.
''That may not be good, depending on whether species that are
not good food or red tide species appear,'' Tomas said.
''But there's no way to control it. All that can be done is
to monitor what is going on.''
Bailey is worried that if freshwater releases continue - as
they must to assure South Florida won't be flooded when the normal
rainy season starts - the lack of plankton in the rivers and the
effect that will have on other river life will only get worse.
NOTES:
Ran all editions.
GRAPHIC: PHOTO (C) & GRAPHIC (C), 1. DAVID LANE/Staff Photographer, Stuart
Middle School teacher Lois Lynch trails a plankton net behind
the Environmental Studies Center boat River Scout to collect samples.
Few plankton have been found in the Indian and St. Lucie rivers
since the freshwater releases from Lake Okeechobee began., 2.
MARK HEMPHILL/Staff Artist, Plankton - food chain's missing link,
Plankton, microscopic organisms at the base of the food chain,
have almost disappeared from the once salty St. Lucie River and
Indian River Lagoon since heavy releases of fresh water from Lake
Okeechobee.
LOAD-DATE: March 30, 1998