This article is part of an ongoing series of contemplations about God’s creation and man’s role in it by Rev. Lou Veiga, Pastor of Covenant Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Houston, TX.
In August 1968, my parents purchased their second home after leaving Cojimar, Cuba. The house remains in the north part of the village of Coconut Grove, in Miami. The place was known for its boxing arena, playhouse, Bahamian community, artists, and musicians. It became a Mecca for flower children in the late 1960s and early 70s. To date, while people flock to visit and live there because of its reputation for variety, more people are drawn to Coconut Grove for its coastal natural beauty and easy access to Biscayne Bay.
For these and other reasons, the Miami-Dade County area continued attracting more residents. In 1960, its census population was 265,000. By 1980, this number had grown to 1,625,000. Conscientious Floridians and government officials foresaw that this surge in urban development if not carefully planned, would eventually put increasing pressure on the unique ecology and shoreline of Biscayne Bay, the prize gem of this Caribbean treasure.
A few hundred yards from the mainland, the waters around Coconut Grove were dotted by small, sandy islands. These held red mangrove tangles, invasive Australian Pine, and a variety of scrubby shrubs, with one or two islands hosting native coconut trees. These islets afforded safety from wind and surf and served to spark imaginations in the minds of those seeing them from the mainland.
My neighbor Bob and I were middle schoolers who wanted to explore but did not own boats. In Bob’s eagerness to get out on the water, he found an eight-foot dinghy with a few holes in its sideboard and patched it with fiberglass, as good as new. For transport, the dinghy fit inside his father’s rusty old station wagon when the tailgate was down, protruding by only a foot. The dinghy had a four-foot berth with an opening for a centerboard. We capitalized on this feature and added a two-foot keel for stability, a small mast, and an old bed sheet for a sail. The dinghy could now be rowed or sailed. Steering was by paddles, as the craft had neither a tiller nor a rudder.
We lived within walkable distance from a nearby lot directly across Bayshore Drive and Twenty-Second Avenue. This was an undeveloped field in 1969. In the 1970s, Miami mayor David T. Kennedy, inspired by the celebrated architect Fredrick Law Olmsted, sought to develop Miami as an ecologically responsible community. Kennedy named that lot Coconut Grove Park (later renamed David T. Kennedy Park). It contained various grasses and a dirt road leading to the bay’s stoney shoreline. There was no seawall there. Nevertheless, Bob and I launched the dinghy from a private canal we could access from the field, as the water there was deeper. We were young teenagers, so nobody minded us trespassing. From the canal, it was easy to cruise into the bay.
Our first aim was to perfect the rigging of our makeshift craft and avoid crashing into buoys, channel markers, docks, and other vessels. We were also careful not to harass the occasional manatee grazing the shallow grass flats. After gaining confidence, we set sail to the nearest island, one flanking the north entrance to the marina.
These islands were not developed at that time. Once on the sandy beach, Bob and I fished the eel grass flats using a 20-foot long, 4-foot seine net. Our catch consisted of juvenile fish of many varieties – mullet, barracuda, mangrove snapper, grunt, schoolmaster snapper, pinfish, pufferfish, and lots of Jenkinsia majua, a nutritious 3-inch silverside belonging to the herring family. The occasional pipefish and seahorse were prizes as we both kept aquariums. The bay fascinated us.
At our canal’s entrance was a house whose property had a rocky point on the shore. That area held lots of fish. You needed to make an almost perfect cast from the opposite shore of the canal, but with enough lead, you could reach the sweet spot just in front of the rocks. There was no seawall. The house’s battered and abandoned first floor was a frightening warning of the wrecking force of a storm surge. You could catch all the silver grunt fish you wanted using cut bait there. One visit to the canal yielded a stringer of more than 20 ten-inch grunt fish.
As we fished, we noticed good numbers of schooling fish moving in and out of the canal at the surface. These we knew were mature mullet fish, Mugil cephalus, about a foot long. The mullet would roam the complex shoreline and estuaries of Biscayne Bay in search of food and breeding grounds. Fresh mullet is superb bait, so we would cast our shrimp in their direction but could never entice them to strike. We later learned that mullet only ate detritus and had no interest in our bait. The schools of mullet were large and predictable in the canal at high tide.
By 1972, things had changed in Biscayne Bay. The number of keeper-sized grunts from the canal significantly diminished – we stopped fishing there and tried other spots, such as the bridge that spanned Bear Cut between Virginia Key and Key Biscayne. The mullet shoals also became smaller and less frequent in our canal. Bob and I didn’t give it much thought, however, as by then, Bob had purchased an ocean-worthy 24-foot inboard/outboard V-hulled fiberglass boat made by Piranha to reach the Atlantic’s Gulfstream.
On one of my visits to the Coconut Grove library, I noticed an old, worn book on the shelf. It was published in 1920 and contained maps, charts, and recreational fishing reports of Miami and Biscayne Bay. What I learned from reading that book made a lasting impression. Why, a shallow water coral reef on the west side of Bear Cut regularly produced snapper, grouper, and other choice food fish. This meant the bay waters around Virginia Key had been less opaque; otherwise, a coral reef, which feeds on intense sunlight, could not have formed. In the cooler months, dozens of migrating cero mackerel were caught in the cut.
In other words, Biscayne Bay offered a bonanza to fishermen so that one didn’t need to sail offshore to enjoy a good catch. This now-dead, forgotten reef was located just south of the current National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration building, in the back of the old Miami Seaquarium. But even in 1972, I didn’t know anyone who regarded that spot as a good fishery or holding a living coral reef. Fishing had changed in Biscayne Bay since 1920. Even since 1968, fishing had changed. Thinking back, I didn’t need a book to inform me of the decline of aquatic life in the Bay. In retrospect, I could have surmised this from the diminishing mullet runs.
As Miami grew and expanded southward along the coast, the land south and east of Cutler Ridge became home to more people. But this meant the loss of the native shoreline, which, for millennia, had served as a nursery for hatchling fry and small invertebrates. The tangled masses of native red mangrove trees along the shore that protected these creatures from predation were bushwacked.
The jagged, complex shoreline of South Florida, so typical of the small islands in the bay, had offered hundreds of linear miles of shoreline and increased surface area for gas exchange, vital for fish growth; much was eliminated and replaced by abrupt, concrete seawalls. These were needed to retain the valuable developed property. Thus, the base of the food chain in the bay was significantly compromised. The mullet could still find detritus to eat but had nowhere to rear up. Large numbers of juvenile mullets were lost to predation. Other species hatched and grown in the bay would suffer a similar fate.
The loss of beautiful and valuable aquatic creatures is lamentable. On the other hand, it remains to be seen whether the gamble of developing Miami to the east of Cutler Ridge without adequate defense against a hurricane surge will continue to pay off for humans. Hurricane Andrew in 1992 did tremendous damage, but people rebuilt their homes and businesses. Florida homeowners’ insurance companies regularly address the problems associated with the costs of insuring properties in vulnerable locations. Many insurance companies have folded as a result of losses. This item remains at the top of the agenda at their annual board meetings.
In retrospect, a Biblically responsible and godly stewardship of our environment might have suggested a different solution to city expansion and environmental sustainability along the shoreline of Biscayne Bay. The two goals need not be mutually exclusive.
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One example of an estate below the ridge on Biscayne Bay that has survived several storm surges is The Museum at Viscaya. This elegant Italian mansion was built in 1916. The architect and builder thoughtfully integrated the bay’s unique environmental features into his plans: an early drawing of the site has the house elevated about 20 feet above sea level. Two flights of coral-hewn stairs from the boat landing reach the house. A partial seawall protected the house and lawn directly in front of the house, but the southern portion was undeveloped. The latter area hosted a salt march featuring a network of more minor canal works and a mangrove forest – a perfect habitat for fiddler crabs and various juvenile fishes.
Even so, this property has suffered significant water damage twice in its history, and its survival in the face of continued high-rise construction along nearby Brickell Ave in Miami has been questioned. One reminder of the bay’s threat is that Viscaya’s hurricane-salted rose garden no longer thrives. I last visited the fiddler crabs in 1973, during my senior year at Immaculata-LaSalle High School, which borders that property. At that time, I saw many crabs and Gambusia fish species (useful for mosquito control) but no mullet.
In June 1980, the United States Congress founded Biscayne National Park to protect this unique lagoon on the Caribbean and Atlantic Ocean shores. The Park is chartered to preserve the bay and the Florida Keys corals and mangrove forests from overdevelopment—or perhaps one should instead call it unwise development, for compromises between native wildlife and human habitation must surely be accommodated.
Unfortunately, the total costs of these large-scale community projects are seldom projected onto future generations. Intangible assets such as childhood adventure and discovering our Creator’s wonders continue to defy dollarization.
Photo by Linda Robert on Unsplash.