Virginia Key: Crabs, Seagrass, and Sunshine

What a beautiful, sparkly day we had out at Virginia Key Historic Park and Virginia Key Beach Park in Miami, in Biscayne Bay.

The weather is beginning to cool, there is a breeze in the air and less humidity. Now, mind you, the temperature change is miniscule, but those couple of degrees make a HUGE difference here in South Florida.

Virginia Key Historic Park is a gem- what a amazing place, and an example of how we can take- back something special and restore it to it's beauty and glory. The park is on the eastern side of Virginia Key - a barrier island in Biscayne Bay in Miami. In the early part of the 1900's Crandon Park opened on Key Biscayne. It offered a beach, a beautiful park, equipped with a train for the kids and a carousel, a zoo, and much more. It was, and is, nestled amidst the mangroves on hundreds of acres. In the 1940's the "coloreds" or "black" folks - humans of African descent were not allowed on the "white" beaches (a sad legacy, indeed), so they built the "coloreds" their own beach - 82 acres. It too, was equipped with a carousel and a small train for the kids, as well as a dance hall and restaurant. The beach was a huge success with the community and became and important part of the tradition of Virginia Key and the people who visited there.

(can you see the crab?)

After all beaches were open to everyone, the "colored beach" at Virginia Key became a dumping ground for everyone's unwanted items, people dumped stuff on top of mangroves, in the water, and filled the place up with trash. The park itself became the beach for nudists and others and fell into neglect. In the 1980's there was an initiative by the community to restore the beach and its history to the community. It was successful. Committed and dedicated people cleaned it up and have turned the area back into a gorgeous place for local people to frequent (of any race or background) and are restoring the natural spaces back to their origins as much as possible.

While cleaning out all the trash that negligent people dumped there, the workers uncovered 50 foot tall Mangrove trees, trees that are possibly 100 or more years old!

They were hidden under trash and exotic invasive plant species that had taken over. Now baby mangroves are growing in and filling the fresh salt water that is flowing in from the bay.

The neighboring park - Virginia Key Beach was also restored after Hurricane Andrew in 1992. The park and many, many volunteers took out tons of exotic, invasive plants that were trying to push out the native Coastal hammock species.

To their excitement, the workers found that many endangered plants were still thriving and holding on under the barrage of tropical exotic growth. An example is the Biscayne Prickly Ash that they found. Now, to my pleasure and for the benefit of all, the hammock has a wonderful trail, with interpretive signs throughout labeling the many different plants native to the area.
We will be planning a trip back that way in cooler weather to take advantage of the walk. This time we just wanted to get in the water!!!

SO, we did.

There is so much life, it is teeming, bursting, with hundreds and hundreds of critters -thousands that we can't even see.

Biscayne Bay is special in that way, it is shallow and covered with grasslands - turtle grass, manatee grass, and many more.

(look for the spotted baby barracuda in this picture)

The grasses are an important food to the sea creatures - manatees and turtles included. Green Sea Turtles are called "green" because their meat is green due to the heavy amounts of sea grass and weeds they ingest.

The sea grass creates a nourishing mini-forest for all kinds of little critters - crabs, shrimp, fish, more crabs, more shrimp, more fish!

Sponges line the sandy bottom and schools of mullet dart about. Baby Barracudas stand still watching and waiting, and gulls and pelicans dive down to raid the plenty. Crabs crawl in and about the rocks, fish hide in their caves, and limpets, barnacles and chitons dot the rocks along the jetties. We saw green shrimp, pink shrimp, brown shrimp - in fact, Biscayne bay is vital to the shrimp industry. The shrimp we want to eat grows up in the seagrass beds.

When scooping with a net, it is easy to think that nothing is found. So many times we looked down and thought, "oh darn, didn't find anything...but wait, what's that thing jumping, oh, it's not a piece of seaweed, it's a shrimp!"...

~Or, empty the net into a bucket, nothing there but a dead sponge...the bucket gets left on the side to settle, upon re-examination we notice that the bucket is now full to the brim with little floating, crawling, swimming creatures - pipe fish, crabs, plankton, shrimp, fish....

The little babies in the class love to watch the life unfold and come out, they sit and watch the fish or crabs in the buckets with such wonder and amazement, I love it.

The sea beds are also home to the Florida Spiny Lobster and Blue and Stone Crabs - all delicacies and important parts of the Florida economy. One moms deftly caught a large Blue Crab - a mama crab,with orange egg sacs - or roe - covering her back. So, seabeds are important...we need to stop dredging and filling and developing!! We have cut up the bay and sectioned it off and dredged it all up so that boats can pass through with ease. In the process we have neglected the place.

The kids and parents that entered the bay and discovered it's beauty may think about this and work to change the way we do things. We saw that change in action at the historic park - we saw and appreciated the success and the love that was given to preserving not only the land, but the legacy of the land and its people. It's not impossible.

On the way back to our cars - at the historic park, we had an encounter with a very silly, and way-too-tame Sandhill Crane.

These birds frequent the Everglades and up north in Palm Beach and beyond, but are rarely around these parts. The bird was very tame and wanted us to feed it. It walked right up to the kids, as you can see it was just about as tall!! But, how cool - what an experience!!!