At the back edge of a backyard in a dead-end South Florida canal, Arthur Tideman is drilling holes into the face of a seawall his marine construction company recently installed in Popano Beach, Florida.
The seawall is a newer design of reinforced concrete encased in vinyl. It’s a smooth, hardened ledge at the intersection of land and sea that’s designed to protect property and make the coastline more habitable for people.
The problem, Tideman says, is that it makes the coastline very inhabitable for anything else. “It’s not a natural shoreline like mangroves and sand,” he says, “it’s just a straight giant wall.” That’s why he and his crew are on a bobbing barge outfitted with a crane, installing two first-of-their-kind planters that, when hung, will house two living mangrove trees on the otherwise featureless wall.
Plastic is also taking a toll on marine life. In fact, just a baseball-sized piece of plastic can kill an adult manatee and according to a new report from the Ocean Conservancy, other marine wildlife are at a similar risk. A leader from Ocean Conservancy presented these findings at Apollo Beach, and called for action to control plastic use. “They could be killed by something that’s relatively, you know, insignificant to them. But it’s a testament to the amount of plastic that’s showing up in our waterways, and that it does accumulate in these animals,” JP Brooker said, Ocean Conservancy’s Director of Florida Conservation.
If enacted, the MANTA Protection Act would prevent the needless harmful capture of threatened and endangered wild animals. The Florida Legislature is considering the Marine At-Risk Native Endangered, also known as the Threatened Animal Protection Act. This is a bill that would prohibit the capture of threatened and endangered marine species from Florida waters for exhibition and display.
Although certain animals, such as manta rays, are protected under the Federal Endangered Species Act, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission permits their capture through Marine Special Activity Licenses, allowing endangered or threatened species to be taken from the wild and exported to other states or countries for public display. These animals can and often do suffer and die as a result of capture and captivity. These animals are removed from already lowering populations and their capture further reduces the odds of population recovery. The legislation would also align Florida with the Endangered Species Act, which does not allow for taking animals for exhibition of education reasons.
