EDGEWATER, Fla. – The Riverside Conservancy has been working to get results for the Indian River Lagoon, and biologists around Central Florida say their work is helping clean up the waterway.
On Wednesday, the group planted 1,000 mangrove trees along the Mosquito Lagoon, which is the most northern portion of the Indian River Lagoon in Edgewater.
“We’re using nature’s filtration systems to help clean the lagoon,” said Kelli McGee, executive director for the conservancy. “It helps clean the water by filtering off runoff pollution.”
She said the mangroves will also protect shorelines.
“Fifteen feet of vegetated shoreline can reduce wave energy by 50%, so it actually helps protect properties from storm surges,” she said.
The Riverside Conservancy was founded in 2017 but gained traction three years ago when the lagoon’s health took a turn for the worse.
The FWC reported over 1,100 manatees died in 2021 and another 800 in 2022. The majority of deaths were in the lagoon with most manatees starving to death due to the seagrass they eat being killed off by pollution.
It was also devastating for commercial fishers in the area, which the new mangroves planted should help, too.
“More than 80% of commercial fish species actually spend some part of their life cycle in and around mangrove roots,” McGee said.
The group is also planting hundreds of thousands of clam and oyster beds along the Mosquito Lagoon.
“Each clam when they’re full grown can filter up to 20 gallons of water a day and each oyster can filter up to 50 gallons of water a day,” she said.
Biologists said this team and their partners’ work has already made a visible difference with seagrass beds starting to regrow.
“We can really see how the water is much clearer in this part of the lagoon than further south in the Indian River Lagoon,” McGee said.
The state’s environment protection department has caught on, too, now partnering with Riverside Conservancy to get more of these projects done.
“Our goal for 2024 is to plant two miles of shoreline, restore an acre of seagrass and eight acres of clam habitat,” McGee said.
McGee said the challenge they face in this work is getting the permits to plant along the shorelines. She believes a bill just introduced for the next legislative session by a state senator in Miami though would help loosen some of those rules to help them and other groups in Florida clean up waterways.
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