The greater Miami land and sea region is a fresh and saltwater seesaw.
Every six hours, mother nature calls the tides, and a human engineered system of levies, locks, pumps, dams, channels, and canals exert what control they can over the water they both push and pull for.
Together the fresh water of the Everglades and saltwater combine to create what is called an estuary.
These are the seven ecosystems featured in my new book and movie, Watery Miami.
Shoal Point
Shoal Point is identified in the earliest of cartographic references from both indigenous and colonial powers and refers to a unique geographic feature characterized by a sea floor exposed by tides, sandbars, and diffracting waves. This area offers the wild savage elements of ancient Florida, at a tidal inlet through a mangrove hammock in the Biscayne Bay; surrounded by the seagrass flats, sandbars, and the namesake shoal. These were the previously dominant features of South Florida. …
Wow. It’s been quite a journey.
Four months, over 120 miles, seven different ecosystems, bugs, burns, blisters, bunyons, early mornings, late nights, lots of paddling.
There were storms, and sharks, and giant tarpon. Sun poisoning. Heat exhaustion. Dehydration.
I got thrown off my boat in a rip current going across the infamous Haulover Inlet and lost a whole chapter to the salty sea.
Wow. It’s been fun. And I have Watery Miami, a new book and movie to show for it.
I’m shipping out of Coral Reef Park in the Palmetto Bay sector of the Miami-Dade County suburban zone. Built and constructed with a purpose through…through dynamite and dredging. Through heavy metal and explosions. Through nitroglycerine combustion and various aspects of construction.
This channel was cut straight out of the bedrock. The limestone foundation. The Oolitic rock which forms the aquifer. This is what it was drawn from and what it was created for. And this is called The C-100.
C-100 is the C one double 0. And that’s a canal that drains out to the Biscayne Bay. The reason it was built in 1960 was as a drainage for flood lands. The two biggest high schools in Miami-Dade County are located in Kendall. So that could give you an idea of the density of the suburban population in an inverse reflection of the urban core which dominates the popular consensus of what it is that is Miami. …
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