From bottlenose dolphins to seagrass, Biscayne Bay's ecosystem is under serious threat from pollution.

Learn what's being done to save the bay and ways you can help protect this vital resource.

Stay with us as we dive into Your South Florida.

Hi, I'm Sandra Viktorova, filling in for Pam Giganti.

Welcome to Your South Florida.

Well, Biscayne Bay is under serious threat from pollution.

That means coral reefs, protective mangroves, and countless marine life are also in danger.

Toxins from fertilizers and leaking septic tanks are literally destroying this vital ecosystem.

And this isn't a new issue, for years, experts have been sounding the alarm about the need to protect the bay, and now they say we've reached a critical tipping point.

There is a lot at stake beyond marine life, the bay is also home to port Miami, one of the county's top economic drivers.

So how did we get here?

And what is the cost to save Biscayne Bay?

What's the cost if we do nothing?

As part of our most recent town hall, I was joined by a panel of experts to hear the steps local officials and researchers are taking to save the bay in ways we can all do our part to protect this vital ecosystem.

So Todd, if I can start with you.

For those of us who don't live on Biscayne Bay, maybe we don't fish there, maybe we don't vote there, but we can still be contributing to the problem.

Todd, you begin.

I think one of the hardest things for people to understand is that we are all intimately connected to the bay even if you don't see it and you live far, far away.

What we've been trying to pivot to is talking about the greater Biscayne Bay watershed.

It's not just that body of water that you see at the edge of the city, it is the entire area where water can get to Biscayne Bay.

And if you're connected through a canal system, through a storm runoff, you are connected to the bay and what you do on a daily basis at your home has an impact.

And we have such a high density of people in the greater Miami area that it just adds up really, really quickly.

So that connectedness is a really important concept again.

Irela, you have been a huge voice in this long fight to protect Biscayne Bay.

You were recently named as the First Chief Bay Officer for Miami-Dade county.

You're now working on building an advisory board, which will take on the recommendations of the Biscayne Bay taskforce.

So talk about the need for this new role and your priorities, as well as the board's priorities.

This new position stemmed from the work of the Biscayne Bay Taskforce, where I served and really, what we found was that the watershed is quite large.

It's 428 square miles.

And so we have municipalities, we have county, we have state federal jurisdictions, and stakeholders, environmental groups, everyone working on projects in different initiatives, but there was really no one really coordinating and bringing all these folks together.

And so we felt at the Taskforce that we really needed someone that could really serve as that, as that convener and that coordinator.

And also someone that can serve as a water policy advisor for the mayor and the commission and work to implement many of the recommendations from the Taskforce report.

And honestly, we felt that also the county needed a permanent governance structure that can take all these recommendations and move them forward.

And in a permanent, like a permanent board, because the taskforce, we sunsetted, we gave our recommendations and our advice and we went away and therefore, but we felt that we needed an advisory board to make sure that Biscayne Bay had oversight and had a voice for the future and a pathway forward towards recovery.

And so this board will serve to move long-term management of that recovery.

We'll make sure that we set those water quality standards and meet them and really hold everyone accountable.

And when I say everyone, it's really all of us from every governance, every member of our governing structure, even the public in general.

We heard Todd talk about educational campaign, we absolutely were all responsible for the conditions that the bay is in, and therefore we're all part, we all should be part of the solution.

Rachel, I want you to talk about the work of Miami waterkeepers.

Some folks may not be familiar with your organization.

How is your team helping to monitor the bay and the waterways?

And we wanna understand how important is it to your work to collaborate with researchers and officials like Irela?

Yeah, absolutely.

We work very closely with Todd and Irela in many different aspects of the work that we do at Miami Waterkeeper.

Miami Waterkeeper is a local nonprofit focused entirely on protecting the water you love in Miami-Dade and Broward counties.

And we do that in several ways, we focus primarily on clean water issues and also habitat protection.

So for us, that would be seagrasses, corals, and mangroves, and then of course, sea level rise.

And sea level rise is the issue that affects all the other issues that we work on.

And we sort of tackle these issues in a number of different ways.

We have an interdisciplinary approach where we do education and outreach for the community, from everybody from kindergarten on up.

And we have a number of programs that work with all levels of ages in the community.

And then we also do scientific research, and part of that is monitoring 22 sites around Biscayne Bay every single week for bacteria levels, and then sharing that information immediately with the public, through an app called Swim Guide.

So you can see how clean the water is before you go to the beach.

We also do publish peer reviewed literature in conjunction with scientists at FIU or University of Miami or other universities, so that we can understand the science behind the water quality issues that we're working on because the science is really the foundation of everything that we do.

And then finally, we also do policy and legal advocacy.

So there, we work closely with Irela, a lot of the county commission, pretty much every layer of government that has jurisdiction over the bay, which in Biscayne Bay is almost all of them.

And by using the education, the science and the advocacy work we're able to make change.

What is it that you all individually would like folks out there to know about the water quality right now?

This has been an issue for decades, as Rachel said.

I mean, scientists have been warning us that the water quality has been degrading for 30 or more years.

We continue to move water from inland through the canal systems.

And I think people that they see the dolphins when the water is clear, they see seagrass, they see mangroves, they see lots of fish and things are really cool and spectacular when a water is clear.

What we understand now is that there are sort of this constant press or pressure of things like phosphorus and heavy metals and other kinds of things that are getting into Biscayne Bay.

We don't always see those, but they accumulate.

And depending on how the tides are and how much the bay is flushing or not flushing, how much fresh water we're putting into the bay from the canal systems, we can get very quickly to concentrations that sorta just change the entire way the bay operates.

And for those of you who were hopefully impacted for life, because you happen to see the fish kills that have happened over the last couple of years, when you see that, you know the bay is in serious trouble and bad shape, but you could have driven by the day before and seeing dolphins and seeing rays and schools of fish and just thought everything was great, but the water quality was degrading.

There were things coming into the bay, the water temperatures were rising, all kinds of factors come together to have something like a fish kill.

What we have to do now is be proactive and understand that all of these pressures, all these things that are impacting the long-term health of the bay, we start cleaning up and clearing up now so that it's not that you can see them, we need to stop even being able to measure them.

And so one of the things that Rachel's group does and our group does, and all of the collaborators around Biscayne Bay, University of Miami, there are lots and lots of people that are really dedicated to the bay.

FIU have some real time water monitoring buoys out there.

Every three minutes, we measure water quality.

Every three minutes, we wanna know how things look.

And so you just don't always see it, it's there.

And what we have to do is take away that constant input of things like phosphorus and other contaminants from septic systems.

And I'm sure we'll talk lots about that as we move on.

So we can all agree that research and monitoring of Biscayne Bay and connected waterways are essential in protecting it.

Recently, the Your South Florida team had the chance to join Dr. Jeremy Kiszka from FIU Institute of Environment.

He and his team continue to monitor the base bottlenose dolphins and their prey as they try to learn more about the impacts of pollution and other threats to these beloved marine mammals.

Yeah, we have a nice little group of dolphins right over there.

FIU has been involved in the monitoring of bottlenose dolphins in Biscayne Bay I would say since 2017, 18, but NOAA, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration has initiated this whole monitoring project in the early 90s.

So we just teamed up with NOAA to just increase our efforts in the bay because the bay is pretty vast and we're not a whole lot of people.

So we just teamed up to increase our effort to monitor the bay, particularly to see how changes and human impacts affect this population over time.

We run transects, predetermined transect lines, we encounter, we record the position, the behavior of the group's size, if there's a presence of calf so we can monitor reproduction within the population.

And we use photo identification where we use photographs of their dorsal fin that are unique to each individual to monitor the movements and abundance of each of the animals from the population.

And it helps us to really detect some long-term trends which is something that we're analyzing right now and see how healthy the population is.

Animals in Biscayne Bay, bottlenose dolphins here are exposed to a wide variety of threats, habitat degradation, disturbance from boat, the disappearance of their foraging habitats, long-term changes related to climate change.

And it's very challenging for us to tease apart what's the role of each threats on this population.

So we've been working for a few years on the data on bottlenose dolphins in Biscayne Bay.

So we're kind of like starting to look at these long-term changes in abundance and distribution, but also behavior, particularly in relation to seagrass decline, because in some parts of the bay, we observed a 90% decline of the seagrass beds and seagrass bed is really the foraging areas, are foraging areas for bottlenose dolphins.

So what we're trying to see is if we have long-term changes associated with the loss of seagrass in dolphin behavior.

Biscayne Bay is a very interesting system because it's very contrasted.

In the Northern Bay, you have lots of development, lots of houses, and seagrass decline has been observed mostly in the Northern part of the bay, north of Rickenbacker Causeway.

Further south, where you also have the Biscayne Bay National Park, you have bigger seagrass beds, healthier, although there still in some places, some impact, but we still don't really know how the whole, the overall degradation of Biscayne Bay affects dolphins.

So that's really what we're trying to do now.

One of the components of our project is to look at dolphins, but also dolphin prey, because food is extremely important for these animals.

They eat a lot of fish, sometimes up to 20 pounds of fish per day.

So we need to monitor this source and they like a range of different prey, like mullets, pin fish, grunt, trevallies, needle fish.

What we're doing right now is to try to understand what's the relative importance of each prey type for dolphins and see if they're long-term trends in abundance of these prey.

Yeah.

There's a nice little group.

So it's one of these urban dolphins.

Bottlenose dolphins can be very resilient to disturbance and human impacts.

And that's the reason why they're so widely distributed along the Southeast coast, south Eastern coast of the US.

And they can be present in pretty urban areas as we could see today.

We saw five groups of animals.

We've been able to get photos of each individual dolphins.

So we're gonna be able to match these photographs with what we have in our catalog of individuals.

They're right here.

Okay, we can slow down.

There are many reasons why people should care about these animals.

These animals are predators, the top predators of Biscayne Bay.

And having healthy populations of predators is very important to have healthy ecosystems.

These are also charismatic species that most people like.

Dolphins bring a lot of attention, bring also tourism and therefore bringing resources to people directly and indirectly.

Do we wanna see an ecosystems like Biscayne Bay without these large and charismatic animals like manatees and dolphins?

I don't think people are ready for that.

So the work that we're trying to do and accomplish aims at better understanding what's happening, raise awareness to the public, to the authorities and try to find solutions to alleviate threats affecting these animals.

[woman] Which direction are they headed?

This way.

And one of the points Dr. Kiszka noted is obviously the economic ties to the bay.

Irela, like you've said that the environment is our economy, that there's no better example than Biscayne Bay.

So I wanna give you a chance now to talk about the economic value of Biscayne Bay and the impact if the bay dies.

Bay related activities generate about $12.7 billion in economic output, and about 6 million in tax revenue in the local economy.

But these are numbers that we've been using since 2005.

Greater Miami and the beaches we're a global destination.

We're a tourism based economy, we're the cruise capital of the world, people come here to recreate on our beaches, we have two National Parks and Biscayne Bay is basically our central park.

So, we've seen the past almost 20 years, how downtown development has boomed, and it's because of those bay front views.

Just last week, we read that Related Group CEO, Jorge Perez sold his bay front home for $33 million.

Okay.

So the environment in Miami is the economy.

I have to say that.

And honestly, if the bay dies, so does Miami, honestly.

And I just can't emphasize that enough.

So I think it's important that the business community is engaged because to be frank, Biscayne Bay's recovery is going to take everyone, not just government alone, we can't do it without the private sector.

And there's a lot of infrastructure that needs to be improved.

We're talking about septic sewer conversions, we're talking about replacement of aging infrastructure of our water sewer systems.

So that all to me equals jobs.

I'm very excited about this technology boom and new blue technology.

We hear about that and innovation and Florida International University and Todd's group and their high tech buoys on the water and on Biscayne Bay, giving us real time information on the conditions of the bay.

That is all future BlueTech industry that could be homegrown here in Miami.

So with these challenges that we have with water quality and our bay also come economic opportunities.

And that gives me hope, and it should give us some excitement around the economy.

So they're linked.

The economy and the environment here are linked no matter what.

Over labor day weekend, there were reports of a fish kill in Biscayne Bay, but it was nowhere close to the thousands of fish and marine life lost in a massive fish kill in 2020 in Miami's Little River canal.

Todd, you've been monitoring this area.

Can you explain what led to that fish kill?

Were there warning signs and what's the status of the canal now?

I think last year, a whole wide variety of factors occurred.

I mean, it was a really warm summer.

Air temperatures were warm.

Rachel already spoke about sea level rise but sea temperature rise is also an enemy of coastal ecosystems and coral reef systems.

And so we had particularly warm currents.

We had low currents that they wasn't flushing.

You just get this sort of perfect combination of really warm weather, some big rainfall events that cause septic systems to leak phosphorus that get in the canals, getting the storm water drains, you get low circulation.

And that's the perfect recipe for getting these algal blooms that then suck out all the oxygen in the water and you get these massive fish kills.

So, the problem is the recipe for a fish kill is probably reasonably well known from a very broad perspective.

There's a lot of science we have to dig into in terms of what's happening in the sediments down at the bottom that we probably don't know and circulation and stuff, but the recipe is fairly well-defined.

And so far we aren't doing anything to change the recipe of Biscayne Bay.

I mean, and that's the race right now.

We are not gonna combat sea level rise and sea temperature change overnight.

We're not going to change circulation patterns overnight.

We're not gonna restore sort of open flushing in the north bay overnight.

What we can do in a pretty short order is to sort of identify those areas where we're getting particularly high amounts of phosphorus and nitrogen, and that's where Little River comes in.

Every time we have a problem in Biscayne Bay, we go to Little River and we see that there's high phosphorus concentrations.

There's lots of nutrients coming in.

The water is coming in with almost no oxygen to begin with through the canal system.

The Little River seems to be that focal point, that kind of drives the first response of collapse of Biscayne Bay.

And the more we study it, Dr. Piero Gardinali and the Institute at FIU is starting to find some very interesting fingerprints of some environmental factors that are starting to say to us, "Uh-oh, this kind of looks bad.

There's lots of fresh water coming down the Little River.

It has low oxygen.

We need to be really careful."

So again, Irela pointed out that over the last hundred years, we've taken Biscayne Bay, which actually didn't have a lot of water flowing from the land into the bay.

It was only during the really rainy times that there was much fresh water going into the bay.

And now we've created a bay that gets inundated with fresh water constantly through our canal systems.

And so all those things come together, but certainly the Little River is a place we monitor really closely.

And that's kinda like our smoking gun.

Rachel, Miami Waterkeeper's also helping them monitor areas for fish kills and silt plumes like the one reported around labor day weekend.

Things in part to reports from the public.

So what are some of the most common pollution reports you receive from the public and how important is their health?

Yeah, so absolutely critical.

And I think, going back to the causes of the fish kill as well, I think it's really clear that these other stressors that Todd was talking about, the water gets too hot, the circulation isn't great, and especially in Northern Biscayne Bay is all over an underlying layer of pollution and it's that pollution that's really leaving the bay very vulnerable to having our seagrass die off and to having these fish kills, and the bays really getting pushed over a tipping point to the point where it can't sustain life anymore.

And that's when we're seeing these fish kills happen.

And this pollution that I'm talking about specifically is coming from four major places, from septic tanks, from sewage leaks, from stormwater runoff, and from fertilizer overuse.

And the fertilizer overuse piece has really has gotten addressed recently.

We worked with the county and Irela very closely on creating the strongest fertilizer ordinance in the state.

And basically, it's asking you to stop using fertilizer in the summer months from May to October when it's so rainy, that as soon as you've put the fertilizer on the ground, it's runoff down to a storm drain or into a canal, in a waterway, and it's become water pollution instead of helping your plants.

So it's wasting time and money and polluting the environment.

So that's one really easy way you can help.

The septic tanks, the sewage leaks, and the stormwater are gonna take investments in our water systems to upgrade the infrastructure so that we don't have those sources of pollution affecting our waterways anymore.

So that's what we're really working closely with Irela and the county commission, as well as the state and federal government on that as well.

In terms of pollution reports, it's really, really critical for the public to be engaged and informed on what's going on on our waterways.

And we have a program called "1000 Eyes On The Water" and that trains the public to observe, document, and report pollution that you might see going about your daily life.

And you may or may not know if a plume that you're looking at is okay or not okay in the waterway, or if you see dead fish or even cool wildlife and really rare, maybe even Endangered Species Act listed creatures.

And over the last year, we've had an over 600% increase in the amount of pollution reports that we have received from the public.

And many of those have been sewage leaks, some minor, some major, sediment plumes, like the one over labor day weekend coming from the FDOT construction site, where sediment from the land was getting pushed into the water by a rainstorm and ended up making a huge plume of sediment that would fall out of the water column, land on the sea floor and bury seagrass, or other life living there, and also potentially contribute other kinds of contaminants to the waterways.

So I really encourage the public.

We're a small team.

I know Miami-Dade county is out looking for pollution and FIU as well.

So we need more eyes on the water.

We need everybody looking out for the waterways.

So "1000 Eyes On The Water" is a free online course.

You can go to the Miami Waterkeeper website and take the training and then start at keeping your eyes out in case you see pollution that needs to be reported and addressed really quickly.

Okay.

Well, Rachel just said in April this year, Miami-Dade commissioners approved one of the toughest fertilizer laws in the state.

So Irela, can you tell us, I want people to be very clear on what the rule is, so they don't violate it and why it's so important?

Basically, don't use fertilizer during May 15th until October 31st every year forever during the rainy months, that's basically it.

And if you're a commercial operator, there are trainings and certifications you can go through.

We're partnered up with the University of Florida and they have courses that you can take.

And it's basically going to take time obviously for folks to get used to it.

But we're very proud of this.

It's one of the first recommendations right out of the gate from the Taskforce report.

And we created educational materials because it's a county-wide ordinance for all of our cities to use.

It's on our website, a dedicated website, miamidade.gov/fertilizer, it's that easy.

Residents can go, you can download the toolkit.

There's lots of marketing materials, social media, everything you need.

And we really shouldn't be doing it.

Like I said, and just like Rachel said, it just goes down the storm drains and through the canals and just ends up in the bay.

And again, I wanted to just kind of touch on something that Todd talked about with regards to the Little River area.

And I just wanna inform folks that we are taking that area seriously.

And we partnered with the state and we're investing together $20 million worth of projects because we're looking at that area and really doing triage there and to improve water quality and seeing what we can do in a short amount of time, getting folks off septic systems there, investing in some wastewater improvements, incorporating some stormwater innovations, and restoring coastal habitats, and something I'm very excited about is creating a living shoreline guide.

So we can start using green infrastructure and using nature as a way to hold water on the ground instead of dumping it through our storm systems and through our canals.

And so I think there, we need to start getting creative on how to use water in a different way.

What can the public do, right?

For those folks who don't go out there again very often, what can they do on an individual basis?

I mean, we're all in this together.

The time is short.

I mean, we've seen two years back to back when we've had fish kills.

These have been predicted for two decades.

The time is really short.

And so the one thing we can control is our individual behavior.

What we do at our households, how we treat our neighbors, our neighborhoods, and finally how we communicate with each other, understanding that we all live in this one bay.

And this one bay represents our health, wealth, and happiness a hundred percent.

You can watch the full town hall on our Facebook page at YourSouthFL.

We'll see you next time.

Thank you so much for watching.