Don’t Look Up!
From 1967 to 1969 I was part of the Hydrobiology Research Team in the Water Resource Division of the U.S Geological Survey (see John Wesley Powell ), Department of the Interior. Our charge was the first scientific study of the ecology of the Everglades. Not like the writings of naturalists such as Margorie Stoneman Douglas […]
Turn About Is Fair Play
When I was on the Everglades research team in the 1960s, our office and laboratory were in the Federal Building in downtown Miami, as ugly and unadorned a phallic monolith as you would ever want to (not) see. During the riots that ensued after Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination, Liberty City in Miami was […]
The Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Miccosukee Tribe
By now you know I spent almost 2 years on a research team in the Everglades in the 1960s. We would take off for the Cottonmouth Camp Cabin research station (see the African Queen post) from the Shark Observation Tower on US 41, the Tamiami Trail, near the flood control dams and the 40 Mile […]
I Don’t Think I Am In South Florida Anymore, Am I Toto?
The research team I was part of in the Everglades monitored the buildup of pesticide residues in the environment. I suggested we get samples from Taylor Slough. Everglades National Park surrounded a section of land called The Hole in the Doughnut. This was farmland which, as a compromise when the park was created in 1947, […]
The Ecology of the Everglades
This was a summary of the research we conducted. It is an excellent discussion of the ecology of the Everglades. From some hand-written corrections in my inimitable scrawl on the manuscript I know I contributed to authoring it. The Everglades is commonly considered a swamp. It is not. It is a broad, shallow, slowly-moving river […]
Everglades
These are graphics that Phil helped create when he was on the research team in the Everglades. Its purpose was to help people understand the impact of the local fauna on the formation of islands in the Everglades.
Building the Shark River Station 2
That same day I saw my first bald eagle, perched many tens of feet above the forest at the top of a very tall dead tree. We stopped, drifted, looked. Eventually we shook ourselves out of our reverie, started the motor and continued on our journey into the Heart of Darkness (apologies to Joseph Conrad). […]
Building the Shark River Station – Chapter 1
Some well meaning folks, when I was still on Facebook, said my posts were too long, people wouldn’t read them. Well, I write them as much if not more for myself than my “audience”. And the origination of the ones I am finally sharing here was that they were kind of intended as a book. […]
How I Stopped Oil Drilling in the Everglades
From 1967 to 1969 I was part of the Hydrobiology Research Team of the Water Resources Division of the United States Geological Survey of the United States Department of the Interior (Thank you John Wesley Powell!). Our mission was nothing less than coordinating and adding to the knowledge and understanding of the complete ecology of Everglades National Park. For two years of my very young life I got to live a real wilderness adventure.
Gator Wrestling
“You’re Not Afraid of a Little Old 8-foot Alligator, Are You, Phil?” Think what you will, but this really happened… One of our research techniques was sampling the biomass from ten traps (see Appendix for illustration) and from these 500 square feet of net extrapolating the entire biological mass of the Glades! These […]