Tampa Bay is the largest open-water estuary in Florida, encompassing nearly 400 square miles, and bordering 3 counties, Hillsborough, Manatee, and Pinellas. The bay's sprawling watershed covers a land area nearly 5 times as large, at 2200 square miles.
More than 100 tributaries flow into Tampa Bay, including dozens of meandering, brackish-water creeks, and 4 major rivers (the Hillsborough, Alafia, Manatee and Little Manatee).
A single quart of bay water may contain as many as 1 million phytoplankton-microscopic, single-celled plants that are an essential thread to the "who eats whom" marine food web.
Mangrove-blanketed islands in Tampa Bay support the most diverse colonial water-bird nesting colonies in North America, annually hosting 40,000 pairs of 25 species of birds, from the familiar white ibis and great blue heron to the regal reddish egret, the rarest heron in the nation.
Each square meter of bay sediment contains an average of 10,000 animals - mostly tiny, burrowing worms, crustaceans, and other mud-dwellers known as benthic invertebrates. The most numerous creatures in the bay sediment are a primitive, fishlike invertebrate about 2 inches long called branchiostoma. One of the organization's most tangible success stories has been its oyster dome program.
We are so fortunate to live in a very healthy and prolific area of marine life in Tampa Bay. It is our responsibility to care for and nurture our marine neighbors, both flora and fauna. We need to stop dumping our fertilizers and pestisides into the bay, with our run-off. There are still areas in Regency Cove where rooftop run-off runs directly into the bay. All the Florida-Friendly literature tells us to divert our rooftop waters into the ground to filter out impurities. If anyone still has a gutter-line draining directly to the seawall, and our beautiful Bay, please consider redirecting your over-flow through the ground.
There is a link to the right directing you to Florida Neighborhoods for landscaping issues.
