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Plugging Along In Terra Ceia

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By YVETTE C. HAMMETT

yhammett@tampatrib.com

Published: March 18, 2009

PALMETTO - Squeals erupted from a nearly hidden shoreline in the southern portion of Tampa Bay as high school students' bare legs hit the chilly waters of Bishop Harbor.

Slogging across a manmade tidal marsh, members of Lakewood High School's Academy for Marine Science & Environmental Technology carried heavy sacks of plants that will help stabilize the Tampa Bay shoreline a few miles south of Port Manatee.

The students are helping transform a portion of the 2,500-acre Terra Ceia Preserve State Park into a sanctuary for wildlife and a natural filtering system that will clean stormwater runoff before it reaches Tampa Bay.

"This is all to help with our environment and for the future people that's going to be living here," said Michael Diaz, a senior at the St. Petersburg high school who helped grow the smooth cordgrass before students planted it at Terra Ceia March 6.

Students brought some 2,500 plugs of marsh grass from the nursery at their school, which they've transformed into a manmade tidal zone. Inmates from Manatee County harvested another 2,500 plugs of cordgrass from the state's fish hatchery at Port Manatee, giving each student about 150 plugs to plant along the shoreline.

"What you do here will have impact throughout the Tampa Bay area," said Brandt Henningsen, senior environmental scientists for the state's Surface Water Improvement and Management program, or SWIM. His agency is heading the restoration effort at Terra Ceia.

Once complete, it will be the largest ecosystem restoration project ever undertaken on the shores of Tampa Bay, Henningsen said.

"It's one of a series of projects SWIM is doing throughout the Tampa Bay area," he told the students. "We're putting back estuarine and freshwater wetlands." He noted that years ago the area was cleared for a gladiola farm, then later contoured for a golf course community.

Henningsen showed the students aerial maps of finger canals that once jutted from the shoreline, created for houses and boat docks. Those finger canals have since been dismantled and the area reconfigured into salt marsh.

"We're trying to protect the shoreline and stabilize it so it can weather storms," he told the students.

The state purchased the Terra Ceia property on the steps of a Manatee County courthouse in the mid-1990s. It is the southernmost piece of land in a chain of protected parcels that make up a wildlife corridor stretching more than 20 miles south of the Little Manatee River.

Lakewood senior Brittani Woolverton said she was happy for the opportunity to help out with the restoration since she is contemplating a future filled with environmental work. "I want to work in oceanography, to work with orcas. This is a great program and a great way to introduce students to land resources."

Reporter Yvette C. Hammett can be reached at (813) 865-1566. To view a gallery of photos from this event, go to www.southshore.com, keyword: Terra Ceia.

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