how the rivers looking after irma? had plans to fish down in vero this weekend with the kayak but think i'm gonna wait till things get back to "semi-normal"

Murky but lots of bait in big pods, find the bait........

Pyrodinium bloom is heavy in Rockledge area so the bioluminescence is impressive. Worried it might grow to higher densities though. 

Before the storm there were slot reds at the end of my street at daybreak and really big tarpon out along the channel. One morning the tarpon had bait pushed up on the shore and were crushing it. Today I saw a few big ones roll near bait balls so they are still hanging around middle IRL. No grass in my neighborhood. Hasn't been for awhile.

District is dumping water from Stick Marsh out C54. Their press release says it is to avoid sending more north into the flooded Poinsett, Geneva, Sanford areas than they have to. There's nine years of muck built up on the bottom of C54 since the Fay discharges in 2008. That water is pretty rank headed down the Sebastian.

I question the wisdom of their decision. Runs counter to what their hydrologists said in 2004.

Anyway. Hopefully the water they are sending down C54 is a drop in the bucket compared to the local run off from the storm down Turkey Creek, Eau Gallie, etc..... and it ends soon. That said, there are probably some fishing opportunities to be had where that water is running down in the transition zones between water masses. You can find a lot of bait and stuff crushing the bait on the edge of the dirty water. 

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Edited: 09/15/2017 at 06:06 PM by scombrid

Just got out of sitories , there is so much water the trees are under water, and water is to top of dikes. No more room for water there

Yep Three Forks is full. Can still move water through it when it is full. It is currently 2' lower than Stick Marsh.

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I suppose yet tell that to the folks up north whose houses are flooding. It seems like it was too much water in a short time. Water is flowing today from sitories east to the outflow at TM Goodwin, overflowing the weir at c 40 and flowing from c 54. Busting those dikes would really suck. No matter how you slice it it has to be relieved

I would be nice to reclaim more of the flood plain west of Lake Washington and west of C40/St. Johns Marsh.

I don't guess there's any hope of those folks selling that land back.

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All of the land to Nova rd is underwater, rode all the way to the bridge, those pastures are flooded, that was an inordinate amount in a short span

The bottomland along Taylor Creek is not what I was referencing.

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i was out a perkins a week or two before irma came through. water was pretty clear, mullet were swimming under/around me. tarpon were blowing them up right in front of me. even had a couple mullet wiz right by my head they were in such a panic. need to start bringing a rod in the line up and make a couple casts while i'm waiting between sets unfortunately now the water is stained up pretty good (inshore).

The monitoring station just off of 192 on the St Johns is completely under water, the kissimmee River looks like a massive lake and the big lake is at capacity.

In times past, the cooling of the water seemed to keep the algae at bay, unfortunately, that's no longer the case. It's going to be nasty for awhile.

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I was right.

I just checked the Stick Marsh gauge. It isn't even 6" above the schedule seasonal flood control low and is actually below the scheduled winter high right now. Level in Stick Marsh is falling as they continue to dump >2000 cfs out C54. I'm hoping that they'll close C54 soon and start sending water north again as things down stream of the upper basin project stabilize.

Blue Cypress has turned the corner and stopped rising. Water going out S96C is finally exceeding inputs from the creek.

Jane Green Detention Area (Bull Creek WMA) has a ton of water in it and that is where about 1/2 the flow in the St. Johns at 192 is coming from right now.

The marshes are very happy though. There's a widespread low grade fish kill in the river but not terrible considering the oxygen demand from flooded soils, tannins, etc... The marsh plants are loving the water and the ditch minnows and grass shrimp are going to reach plague abundance which is a boon to the bigger fish and all the fish eating birds when the water recedes. The white pelicans should like what they see when they show up after last year's drought conditions.

The flooding can be problematic for the folks that happen to be in its way, but the St. Johns marshes need this. Most years the soils are over-dried and oxidizing which causes a big discharge of disolved organic carbon when the rains do come (that DOM is the primary cause of the low oxygen fish kills). The over-dried soils are also what is allowing the willows and paragrass and such to over-run so much of the marsh.

I just hope that the tap doesn't get shut off like it did after Mathew last year and sent the St. Johns back into drought mode.

Look at the historical data from the 192 gauge going back to the 1940s and see how the river functioned before the flood control project really got cranked up in the late 1950s. The current water elevation is barely passing the annual high from the olden days.

We can't ever get the old hydrology back because it would flood too many people but the St. Johns does ultimately benefit a lot from these high water events and it would be nice to hold onto the water a little bit longer so the duration of annual drying of the marsh soils would be a little shorter.

 

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" plague abundance  "

 

I may need to borrow that phrase, thanks!

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add a signature since I'm here in profile anyway

 

http://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/fishing/pests-diseases/freshwater-pests/species/gambusia

 

Sadly, I didn't invent "plague fish". People where our gambusia aren't native have found them to be rather invasive.

 

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Lake Washingington crossover, now an underwater structure. Fished Stickmarsh last night, water flowing in from Fellsmere Reservoir, Blue Cyress pipe and all gates from Garcia, fishing is all time but at least a 4 to 5 knot current running through to c 40 and c54. Probably not as high as last January but lostsa water running over weir at Malabar, like scom said hope they hold some back for the spawn. It will be epic this season

Houses at Sarno extension/ Lake Washington still under water. What a mess

Parts of Polk County are still under water and the Kissimmee River is still four feet higher than the high water mark during a rainy summer. Mosquitoes at the Kissimmee Prairie Preserve are at the ridiculous levels I've read about in settlers journals from the 1800's. My legs were black with the vicious little bastards in the middle of the day.

The outflow into the gulf and Atlantic is going to be nasty, the water in the Kissimmee is anything but clean.

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I was right.

Some of this falls under self inflicted wound territory given the river's history of flooding. Gage heights 2 feet higher than the current level at SR 192 were common before the river straightening, ditch digging, levee building etc... was really ramped up in the 1950s. The baseline level was close to what is now our average annual maximum and the annual difference from high to low was smaller. The whole system just stayed wetter and drained more slowly.

 

The river is about 5 feet above the land that Heritage High School is on. I wonder how many people in Palm Bay realize that their fate is in the hands of the Army Corps and SJRWMD and the ability of C1 to convey water meant for the St. Johns down into Turkey Creek?

 

Astor drives me a little crazy. Flood stage is 2.8 feet and that is with the gauge zero point below sea level so that the 2.8 foot flood level is like 2 feet above sea level. I have trouble calling it a "flood warning" when the properties getting flooded are 200km from the river mouth and are getting flooded by water maxed at 3.5-4 feet above sea level. There's plenty of high ground in Volusia and Lake County so building that low should be entirely at the risk of the builder without flood insurance subsidy or the need of some kind of emergency declaration by authorities.

Butt, it might be a flood of historic proportions if we get a big rain on top of the water that is here. Bull Creek WMA already has a lot of water (Jane Green Detention area is the biggest volumetric storage in the St. Johns system). If the river hits 19 feet at 192 then they'll close the gates at Jane Green and really flood Bull Creek.

I ran around between 50 and 46 yesterday. We definitely have enough water already. Not really keen on seeing the Kissimmee Basin or the St. Johns go any higher.

 

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Brevard got a solid dump of rain last night and it was concentrated on the St Johns. Those up-down stream aren't out of the water yet.

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I was right.

Radar estimates 4-6 inches over an area from 95 to the county line from about Fellsmere to Vierra. 

There is a convergent band dumping on southern Brevard again this morning and the river is backing up from downstream because of the northeast wind and heavy rain from Flagler on north.

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https://www.change.org/p/11632192/u/22098922?utm_medium=email&utm_source=petition_update&utm_campaign=200356&sfmc_tk=JDqz%2fvQkRXpUIBAthewIQE9nUY47W2lFCpYB1gempVTzPChgBNhbMCVYPmxigkE4&j=200356&sfmc_sub=508889893&l=32_HTML&u=36987292&mid=7259882&jb=9

i went fishing in the banana river this past weekend. put in at the end of banana river drive and paddled a couple miles past kars. the water clarity the ENTIRE paddle was horrible . 1ft deep and couldn't even see the bottom. lots of mullet and lots of dolphin feeding on them. didn't see one tail the entire time. spooked a couple trout/reds and that was about it. anybody know of some semi clean water? i'm not looking for exact spots, just a general area.

Water was decent in south Mosquito when I was up there a couple of weeks ago.

Middle IRL in Cocoa/Rockledge/Suntree is terrible. Still have bioluminescence as of my paddle up to the bee line and back this morning. Color looks like a mix of brown tide and pyrodinium. Fishing isn't that bad here though for either species of drum. Can't sight them though.

Irma put a lot of nutrients in the water and there isn't any seagrass to use it so the plankton are prolific. Water won't clear until the plankton have worked through the available nutrients in the water column and that is only if our current dry spell persists. Hopefully we don't get a bloom collapse like in BRL in March 2016.

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Yea, I don't think camo is a good color for river water.

The flushing from the Irma bitch helped, but this dry period might set it off again.

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I was right.

Banana looked bloomy Saturday when I crossed the 520.

The water quality sensor that SJRWMD has up there is showing chlorophyll >200 micrograms per litre. That is very high.

For comparison. The south Mosquito Lagoon station has been <10 for most of the last month.

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http://webapub.sjrwmd.com/agws10/hdswq/

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The DO was low, but it looks like the gale force conditions have helped.

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I was right.

It will be interesting to see what the wind and sudden drop in temps do to the river water.

Hopefully, the temperature will stay above the snook threshold.

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I was right.

I know our poor jacksonville snook(the few up here) will have it tough but a few creeks are spring fed and believe that is how some survive. Im sure many will hunker down in the port or at the power plant, would be a shame as the stocks seem to be recovering well from the freeze 5-6 years ago that killed them all the way down to the everglades!

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I troll 2L.com to be a better person in real life

2010 was the last big chill.

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The extra runoff from Irma primed the pump. Now the increasing day length, steeper sun angle, and calmish mostly sunny weather is fueling the growth. 

The monitoring station at 520 on the Banana is showing chlorophyll over 300 ug/L and dissolved oxygen above 150% saturated today. 

This is tripping into March 2016 phytoplankton density.

IRL in Rockledge-Cocoa is looking pretty bad too as of my paddle from Rockledge to the BeeLine and back this morning.

I know in my neighborhood that people were laying down the fertilizer heavy in the couple of weeks before Irma. I assume lawn companies were doing that all over. Through in the out-dated waste water systems that dumped raw sewage as icing on the plankton cake. Hell, several of my neighbors have been watering 2-3 days a week right though the winter/dry season and adding straight nitrogen to keep some green going when lawns should be mostly dormant. 

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So what does it take to get some inlets or at the very least pumping stations to start exchanging water with the ocean? Pretty sure it's already too late to save the irl. With all the cold weather you would think we would have clear water, instead we have new blooms all the way up into mosquito lagoon. This is depressing.

We associate cold with clear around here because the cold historically corresponds with the dry season which is when the nutrient load is the least so the plankton aren't as abundant and the water clears up. 

Some plankton are slowed by cold. Some don't like short day length and low sun angles of winter. The pyrodinium that blooms in the summer here lately doesn't like cold water. But there are plankton around, especially the currrent brown tide, that don't mind cool conditions and short days at all. All they need is fertilizer.

Mathew didn't put much water down and then it was quite dry from after Mathew all the way until May or June. The lagoon got the clearest that I had seen it in a few years in March 2017 even though last February and March were very warm. 

Contrast that with winter 2015 with lots of winter rain and the bloom and bust that gave us the March 2016 BRL fish kill.

Also contrast the 16/17 winter following Mathew with the 17/18 post-Irma environment. 2017 was a wet wet season with Irma and another post-Irma rain event putting down tremendous rain. All that run-off carried a lot of nutrients into the lagoon with sewage spills as a cherry on top of a very big fertilizer cake. The plankton out there are still working through all that nitrogen.

Going to take a huge shift in landscape practices from water use to fertilizer application to make a dent. Our one little mimosa lawn isn't enough to mitigate the sea of St. Augustine around me. 

BTW: The mimosa went dormant and neighbors were horrified at the brownnesss in January. It woke up this week and is beautiful green. Pink puff flower and bees soon to come. I've not run water on it yet.

Oh, on the locks. Drop in the bucket and opening them regularly would wreck the structure due to erosion around the structure. Not enough bang for the buck. 

Last time I was down south it looked pretty bad down there too. 6000 cubic feet per second were dumped from the Stick Marsh down C54 for weeks after Irma on top of the runoff straight from the groves into Sebastian River on the south side of C54. There's a lot of grow juice in that ag waste water.

Fixing the nutrient load is the answer but is probably an insurmountable mountain.

 

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Open the locks at Port Canaveral for 2 hours at every mid-high tide..........

I know too much salt water messes up the ecosystem but maybe a little would help flush the toilet that the IRL is becoming.

i have heard reports that the water conditions in vero/seb area aren't very good either.

stupid question but dont oysters eat or filter some of the above "nuisance nutrients"?

I was surprised to see some last time I was at the seb river and remember hearing about programs to grow them but curious why that died down.

Are there factors that prohibit their existence present?

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I troll 2L.com to be a better person in real life

 

https://brevardzoo.org/wp-content/uploads/Oyster-Gardening-Data-Report-2016.pdf

 

https://www.flseagrant.org/news/2015/12/brevard-county-residents-help-restore-indian-river-lagoon-by-growing-oysters-from-their-docks/

 

I don't know what kind of efforts are ongoing. But trying to restore oysters to a point where oysters can filter the water is a thing. Oysters do eat the stuff that the nutrients grow and help remove that biomass and the nutrients it harbors from the water column.

 

Bad news is that the "brown tide" Aureoumbra lagunensis can kill juvenile shellfish when the concentrations get high enough.

 

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Looks like the dissolved oxygen crashed last week and the Chlorophyll is trending up, but the turbidity is staying low, so let's hope the current brown wave stays reasonable.

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I was right.

Chlorophyll is off the charts.

The diurnal swing in D.O. is insane as is the pH swing that causes as the plankton cycle the CO2 in and out of the water.

I haven't seen the BRL in a few days. 

I just came in from an interval sesssion on the IRL in Cocoa/Rockledge and the water looks like Lake Apopka on a bad day. Unreal.

pH goes screaming high during the day when all the CO2 gets pulled from the water and then plummets at night. I've seen carbonate precipitates in the water during the day because of the high pH. That makes light penetration pretty much zero. That is when the water gets that crazy bright milky yellow/brown/green look as the carbonate really scatters the light amoung the various plankton pigments.

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I hate to pick on the gardening forum since we have a lot of ornamental landscaping ourselves but:

And the gardening forum crowd are way more responsible with their landscape management than all of our mow-n-go chemlawn St. Augustine commercial landscape companies. (or my neighbors that fertilized their grass immediately after the cold snap and then watered every day for 2 weeks). 
"washed away" and the Aureoumbra lagunensis says thank you.

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My canal on sykes creek looks like pea soup. Didn't really clear up at all this fall. I am participating in the Brevard Zoo oyster program. The oysters are growing well despite the water quality. Probaby a feel good thing and a drop in the bucket.

 I was in the Banana yesterday well thankfully not in it. But yea it was disgusting. Rumor has it the crabbers are doing ok but not sure I would eat anything from the toilet. I don't see the water quality improving for a very long time. I sure hope I am wrong.

my parents said the muck sucking is helping(cocoa beach canals), but idk the short term stirring of the silty shit around seems really bad.......hopefully the oyster growing projects take off, wish they could do one as well with seagrass.....want a nice lawn, buy and care for double yardage in seagrass LOL

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I troll 2L.com to be a better person in real life

Oxygen saturation has been going over 150% in the afternoons on these super sunny calm days in the Banana. This type of weather can initiate collapse if it makes the bloom use up the remainder of the available nitrogen in the water column.

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sorry for my ignorance, but collapse as in good(bloom collapse) or collapse as in bad(the river collapse)?

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I troll 2L.com to be a better person in real life

Sudden bloom collapse is bad. It sucks up all the oxygen if the biomass of plankton in the water column is high enough.

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 Remember back when we though 40 or 50 ug/L chlr A was a "big bloom". 

 

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Lagoon update for last month just came out,

Banana is holding strong at 200 - 250 ug/L chlr A (2-28 through 3-30).

That's an improvement from figure 4, above,

and,

I feel a little ill.  

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add a signature since I'm here in profile anyway

dammit man!



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I troll 2L.com to be a better person in real life

The way we are heading, the bloom is going to turn into a solid. IRL aspic.

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I was right.

It's like chocolate. Bright side is the ocean looks amazing comparatively

And the neighbors keep watering 3-4X per week and laying down buckets of fertilizer.

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If we have a fish kill I don't think it will be that bad. Not looking like very many fish to kill.

the river quivers, shudders and shakes

to catch a clean fish try oceans, or lakes

we mustn't be lazy, and turn a blind eye

peer into the water, and try not to cry

though sitting and staring, will get nothing done

if we all join the battle, this war can be won

call upon congress, call city hall

make sure your voice, through cracks doesn't fall

phone up your friends, who told you they cared

every second that passes, means fewer lives spared

if it all ends, hide your surprise

for all of it happened, in front of our eyes

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I troll 2L.com to be a better person in real life

Edited: 04/06/2018 at 12:35 PM by stokedpanda

Poop.