Ft. Myers Harbor Dredging Project

In late July ETE began working alongside Cavache Inc. on the dredging of Matanzas Pass located at Bowditch Point State Park, the Northernmost point of Fort Myers Beach. These dredging projects, which occur at almost every pass and channel boaters use, prove crucial to the overall function and usefulness of the pass. This project in particular has been a unique one with not only turbidity sampling, but additionally a pre-construction benthic survey, shorebird and manatee monitoring.

 

 

A pre-construction benthic survey was conducted throughout the pass to look for submerged resources, such as seagrass, oyster beds, and hardbottom, before construction commenced.  Seagrass was found along the channel. The information found from this survey was used in the dredgers templates to create safe practices to have minimal affect to surrounding seagrass areas.

 

 

As a part of manatee monitoring, everyday an ETE monitor is on the lookout for manatees in the front of the dredging barge. These large, lovable creatures are important to the area for not just ecological roles, but they are a distinguishable symbol of our great state. Manatees take their time swimming around, foraging, and nursing their calves. We want to make sure that we do not get in their way, and anytime they come to investigate the construction area we shut down dredging operations until they get bored and move along.

 

 

We also see a multitude of shorebirds during our early morning shorebird monitoring, ranging from the familiar Brown Pelican to Black Skimmers, Royal and Sandwich Terns, and many different plovers including Wilson’s and Snowy.

 

 

 

Another one of our primary jobs when we are onsite is to measure turbidity levels. Turbidity is the amount of sediment or material that is suspended within the water column. The higher the turbidity, the more material there is and the more “murky” the water looks. Turbidity is caused by disturbances to the bottom, such as dredging operations, in such a way that sediment is spread throughout the water column. We measure this using a specialized meter and compare a sample down current from the work where the current is bringing the turbidity plume, to ambient conditions in the background where water is at it’s natural state with no turbidity influence. It is important that while digging and depositing material we do not allow turbidity levels get too high as it may bury important resources, such as seagrasses and hard bottom, and in severe cases can displace fish and other marine organisms.

 

 

Be on the lookout for us doing more environmental work next time your local pass is being dredged!