More on Manatees- Sunday Nov 6th Fort Pierce

Sunday was nice. We went to the First United Methodist church on Orange street not too far from the marina. Linda and Steve were very hospitable and many of the congregation had lunch in fellowship hall. They told us that the church had been hit by three hurricanes in the recent past and had rebuilt several times. How is that for a building fund? Just keep rebuilding what you have.

Steve said the city marina docks were floating docks at one time, but a hurricane came through and changed all that. They are now regular driven pile docks. The tidal change is not that great and they work better through the bad weather. There were some piles that had scars from being warn away in storms. We had the usual reversing current in our slip. At times an extra fender was needed to protect Ariel from trying to shave the mid ship piling on port. Then you could barely get on the boat from the large gap on that side.







Laundry occupied the afternoon and a trip to the Manatee Observation and Education Center.

http://www.manateecenter.com/



This is from a magazine picture they are too fast to get a good shot. Manatees are similar to hippos without tusks in my opinion. They are huge being around ten feet long and weighing between 800 to 1200 pounds. They favor warm water and are found near power plant warm water deposits. As vegetarians they eat about 100 pounds of sea grasses a day. The center was just across from the marina.




The center stressed that exotic creatures have been introduced in Florida's environment with some detrimental effects. This is a lionfish which was native to the Indo-Pacific area and probably introduced by the aquamarine trade for aquarium use. The theory is that they got out to our waterways probably from hurricane Andrew in 1992 through a broken aquarium. Without natural preditors they have become over populated. Records show they have quickly migrated in three years from Florida to North Carolina and have even been seen in New England contrary to being though of as a warm water fish. They have a wide habitat range living between shallow waters and 575 foot depths. They reproduce quickly and abundantly. Being a voracious predator the effect is to decrease juvenile grouper, spiny lobsters, parrot fish, wrasses and other ecologically and economically important species.

There are 25 % of Florida's environment contaminated by exotic fish and animals from all over the world upsetting the eco system.
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In the parking lot I saw this guy with fish flapping in his laundry basket and I asked if I could take a picture of him. He then demonstrated how using a casting net he caught several fish in two minutes. He just flung the net in the water dockside and drew up the string and got three more fish for his collection.