One Goal, Two Methods
Two environmental groups, Save Crystal River and the Southwest Florida Water Management District, are working to restore the natural habitat of Crystal River and Kings Bay. While these groups share the same goal, their methods for reaching that goal are slightly different. Watch this video to learn how these groups are working to restore the natural habitat.
After you have watched the video, use Review It and answer the following questions about what you heard and saw. You may want to watch the video again or read the transcript before answering.
Watch the Video
As you watch the video, listen for information about:
- The main steps in the Save Crystal River restoration plan
- How something called Rock Star is making a difference
- The two methods being used to plant and protect new grass
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This machine here separates based on size and grain size. It's called a Triflow filter, and it's got shaker screens on top. And as the larger material hits the screen, it will stop on top. Once they are treated on the back end, they get hit with polymers that any suspended solids will get bound together with a heavy polymer and sink to the bottom.
Once it gets treated with the polymer and gets put into a Geotube and as the sediments fall down to the bottom, the water porously comes out through the bag. After removing the unwanted material, divers come in to begin planting the grass. Now the field is set. The bottom is clean. We can go replant.
However, there's a large population of manatees and other herbivores, turtles, ducks, and other fish. And so we had to use a Grow Sav Cage on top of the planting units. So, once the plants are established, they can grow out.
The grass that we're using for here is native to Florida, and it's an ecotype that's called Rock Star. What it excels at is growing not so much aboveground biomass --the leaves, the shoots --but the belowground. These plants are going to get munched on by the turtles and the manatees. And we welcome that because the more these leaves get nibbled down, the faster the roots are going to start growing. That's really why we chose this Rock Star variety.
While the Save Crystal River group works in the private canals, the main part of Kings Bay is under the jurisdiction of the Southwest Florida Water Management District. Chief scientist Chris Anastasiou is taking a slightly different approach to restoring grass beds near the springs.
In order to combat something like Lyngbya, you have to physically go in and plant the good grasses that will eventually with care and maintenance over time out compete the Lyngbya.
They, too, chose the Rock Star grass to plant near an area known as Hunter Springs.
The grass is grown in 3-by-15-foot coconut mats. The way we take it out of the pond is we physically will lift it up to the side. We'll roll it. And when we come out in the field, we take the mat; we put it in the water. And the good thing is that the mats will float for a time, long enough for us to get the mats, swim them to their final position and then slowly weight them down on the bottom.
We also decided that we needed to protect the grasses at least at the beginning from getting grazed on by manatee and other grazers like turtles. And so we finally decided on using the fenced enclosures that we are floating in right now.
Today, Dr. Anastasiou is checking on a newly planted field. It is almost an instantaneous phenomenon where all of a sudden you put the grasses down, you create the habitat, and the fish start coming in.
