Researchers see Gulf environment healing 6 months after Ian

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WINK News spent a week traveling through the Gulf of Mexico with a team of marine researchers documenting how Ian has changed our ocean environment and, by extension, the waterways of Southwest Florida.

As we rebuild on land, our environment does the same at sea. Scientists like Eric Milbrandt, director of the marine laboratory at the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation, are trying to learn from it, just like we did with Charlie and Irma.

“I’ve been through three major hurricanes since I started my career in Florida,” Milbrandt said. “And, yes, we learned something about mangroves the first one; we learned something about water quality the second. So, you know, I hope we can learn something from this cataclysmic event.

Since Ian struck, Milbrandt and researchers at Florida Gulf Coast University have traversed the Gulf three times, studying the water immediately after the storm and documenting its recovery thus far.

“The main thing is that nitrogen levels after the storm are significantly higher than before the storm, and that’s coming from many places,” Milbrandt said. “There were some sewage spills. There were people’s possessions being washed up in estuaries and coastal ocean.

A transfer of water and nutrients between land and water has left our Gulf filled with nutrients that exacerbate the natural growth of Karenia’s tide.

“Immediately after the storm, we saw a lot of turbidity and then the start of red tide patches,” Milbrandt said. “Last time we were outside, in January, we saw much bigger blooms. And then when we left last week, we started to see a decrease in the red tide bloom.

The clarity of the water has improved and the mangroves are slowly but surely recovering. Now, the researchers’ eyes are turned to what’s happening under the water.

“We’ve seen some oyster reefs that look like they haven’t happened and some that have been buried and scoured,” Milbrandt said. “We’re still conducting those evaluations right now.”

Calli Johnson, FGCU’s dive safety officer, dived into these waters before the storm, right after it, and now. Ian’s strength was evident, but the water wasn’t.

“One of our artificial reefs was standing vertically, and now it’s horizontal on the bottom, which in 60 feet of water is a huge change,” Johnson said.

Twenty-four miles off Fort Myers Beach, the natural reef was unrecognizable, covered in sand with only a few protruding corals.

“Where the sediment has been removed from the bottom, it is now filling up; the species we expect to see both on the bottom and swimming around are making a comeback,” Johnson said.

And invasive species like lionfish that moved in after the storm appear to have disappeared, at least temporarily.

“So it just goes to show that Mother Nature can throw a lot at us,” Johnson said. “But then, it can also ensure that there is resilience and rebuilding.”

While the environment hasn’t gone back to the way it was before Ian, it does look better than it did six months ago and should look even better in another six months.

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