The Biscayne Bay Aquatic Preserve (BBAP) water quality team performed station maintenance at the Rickenbacker Basin (BBMRRB) continuous monitoring station located in North Bay, Biscayne Bay near the mouth of the Miami River.

On September 20, BBAP hosted the Pelican Harbor Marina cleanup for International Coastal Cleanup Day (ICC). Over 30 volunteers got to work picking up small debris, like microplastics and bottle caps, and stumbling upon larger debris, like a rusted bike. In total, 248 lbs. of trash were removed from Pelican Harbor Marina.

TBAP staff and interns worked on some preparations of buoy moorings that had been damaged by last year’s hurricanes to be sure that the new rookery island buffer buoys will be securely anchored. This work is ongoing, along with post-rainy season assessments of volunteer work needs on islands near each rookery island.

On International Coastal Cleanup Day, Rookery Bay staff and volunteers met at Shell Island Road (SIR) within the reserve for a successful cleanup effort. The morning began with just a few participants, but the group quickly grew to include more than a dozen volunteers, staff and students from Florida Gulf Coast University.

On Saturday September 20th, employees from the FDEP Office of Resilience and Coastal Protection (RCP) traded their desks for the shoreline to take part in the 40th International Coastal Cleanup, hosted locally by Keep Wakulla County Beautiful (KWCB). This annual event unites volunteers worldwide in a shared mission: protecting oceans and shorelines from marine debris.

This week NCAP participated in the International Coastal Cleanup event held at Linda Peterson Park by the IFAS/Sea grant office on the coast of Hernando County. NCAP staff, and some staff from BBSAP, launched out of the Bayport boat ramp on the airboat to retrieve hurricane debris in the areas further away from where event volunteers on kayaks could reach.

Silver Springs State Park, Wekiwa Springs State Park, and Oklawaha River Aquatic Preserve hosted “Girl Scouts Love State Parks”. On the morning of September 13, 100 Girl Scouts of all ages arrived at Silver Springs State Park excited and curious. They rotated through several stations where they learned about the aquatic food web with live animals to touch, prescribed burning, and what lives in the different habitats within the state parks.

Through the Pensacola and Perdido Bay Estuary Program’s Collaborative Science to Assess Restoration Success (C-STARS) project, our team has been investigating the relationship between living shorelines and seagrasses. At one site, Project GreenShores (PGS), a large-scale living shoreline site in downtown Pensacola, 2 different species of seagrasses (Halodule wrightii and Ruppia maritima) have been confirmed, but not mapped.

Lake Jackson AP supports a diversity of wildlife, including extensive bat populations and nesting wood ducks. Prior to three years ago, however, we didn’t know what kinds of bats lived and foraged here and there were a lot fewer resident wood ducks. To continue surveying and managing the diverse wildlife at the AP, staff went out this week to deploy acoustic detectors as part of the NABat program in collaboration with FWC.

On Friday, Sept. 19, 2025, Central Florida Aquatic Preserve (CFAP) helped facilitate a water conservation outreach event for Latino Heritage Week at Wekiva Island. CFAP hosted a group of high school students from Alianza Americas. The students participated in an Eco Paddle to Wekiva Springs State Park. Then, they learned how to measure water quality with CFAP’s datasonde.