Whale Sharks are a Privilege, Not a Right
James Williams
Green has several symbolic meanings: Money, greed, and sickness. South Floridians are coughing up lungs, watching fish pile onto our beaches, and reminiscing about being out on the water. We have lost the beach to red tide, and a massive, thick, algae bloom that ranges 135 miles up the West coast, and reaches almost 10 miles out into the gulf. The whole West coast of Florida might as well be Illinois now: a big, flat suburb in the middle of nowhere. A living, visible stench cloys to our waters all along the coast, while we cough, and watch, with watery eyes.
This is a consequence of statewide abuse. From Politicians to private citizens, everybody can take a share of the blame. We spoiled ourselves with our environment. We watched after our waters with a nonchalant attitude, believing it would treat us kindly no matter what we did or didn’t do. According to Orange County Water Atlas, an online water quality monitoring data base, all storm drains lead to our waters. The myth that storm drain water enters a treatment plant of some kind allowed us to turn our heads, believing that someone else was dealing with that problem.
And that is our fault. We’ve been assuming that someone else will take care of our problems, and for the passed decade, no one has.
According to the Florida International University Southeast Environmental Research Center, the state government has dropped all funding to 235 water quality monitoring stations along the West coast, including 49 stations along the Florida Shelf, the transitional region between the coastline and the deep sea, about 559 miles out into the gulf. The state cut 30 percent of funds to the water quality stations in the Biscayne Bay in 2014, and the federal government dropped 43 percent of funds to the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary in 2012. In 2011, Florida Governor Rick Scott dismantled the Department of Community Affairs, a department active since 1985 which checked whether land developments were a necessity or not, and whether the development affected water supplies, quality, storage, and/or water flow. The DCA’s responsibility was to make sure that Florida’s land and natural resources were not being depleted by unnecessary land developing. Scott replaced the Department of Community Affairs with the Department for Economic Opportunity. How poetic.
So with all these cuts to water monitoring systems, there has been no way to monitor water quality since these stations were closed. If there was a bloom, there was no way of knowing, and eventually, without monitoring, rouge blooms multiplied into the Entity that it is now. Since there is no commission to monitor the impact development sights have on water flow, the developers gummed it all up to hell. But somewhere, somebody saved a load of cash by skimping over the environment. God bless the person who finds out where all that money went to.
In Florida, our environment acts as a giant filter, and until we choked it out, it worked great. All OUR polluted water was funneled through Florida’s swamps and Everglades, where the water was naturally cleansed. We are now seeing the effects of unchecked greed: Building for the sake of building. We’ve created a monster capable of killing 554 manatees within 8 months of its creation.
We even lost a whale shark to this madness. On July 23rd, 2018, a dead Whale Shark washed up on a Sanibel beach. The 26 foot male Whale Shark was found floating in the surf. According to the Washington post, five shark biologists were brought in to report on his death, and each said that this was the first time they had seen a Whale Shark death caused by red tide. Whale Sharks are the puppy dogs of the sea, and our only known ally’s in the shark kingdom. His death was a tragedy.
This whole mess reminds me of a film I watched when I was younger, Creepshow 2. In among the anthology of short films, a Stephen King story popped up called “The Raft”. In “The Raft”, four swimmers are out on a lake, playing on a floating raft in the middle of it. A black ooze on the surface follows them around, animated by its own vile desires. The first victim falls in, and the ooze clings and dissolves her in traditional 80’s horror movie acid fashion, and one by one eats up the others. The last survivor dives in and swims to shore, just beating the shadow to the beach, where he looks back screaming “I beat you!” only for the scum to heave itself out of the water and cover him like a blanket. This environmental outbreak has all but leaped out of the water and dissolved us into the dirt.
Green also has other symbolic meanings though: regrowth, rebirth, and environment. Life and death are both messy process’s that go hand in hand with each other. Will all this death and disease bring concern for our environments longevity? Are we in the birthing pains of a new future where we learn from our past mistakes, or are we in our first death spasm’s, squirming in the muck. What is Florida without its unique environment? What is Florida without beaches, or lakes, or springs? Without fishing, or manatees and Whale Sharks? Florida is it’s environment, and we are giving her the beat down of the decade. It’s time to regroup, rethink, and change our regulations to start regarding our environment as a privilege, rather than a right.
