In 2015 the Biscayne Bay Habitat Focus Area was designated. It included Biscayne Bay and its adjacent reef tract, including all of Biscayne National Park, the Florida DEP Biscayne Bay Aquatic Preserves, and the northern extension of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary beyond the US Highway 1 bridge at Manatee Bay.
The designation created a nucleus of NOAA resources to attract partners from state and local governmental agencies and nongovernmental entities into productive partnerships to fight for the Area’s wellbeing against multiple growing threats.
The Implementation Plan for the Biscayne Bay Habitat Focus Area (HFA), prepared by NOAA and potential partners, is directed at four goals, as follows: 1) improving water quality, 2) securing and maintaining sufficient freshwater inflow into the bay, 3) protecting and improving habitat for protected and fishery resources that use the bay and reef tract, and 4) generating a strong, well informed constituency. The Biscayne Bay HFA’s approaches to achieving these goals are to develop a scientific basis for good resource management and to use education and outreach activities to inform and provide incentives to policy makers and the public to generate both voluntary and mandated actions to improve bay habitat.
Three senior scientists at local NOAA labs, the Southeast Fisheries Science Center (SEFSC) Miami Laboratory of NOAA Fisheries and the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory of NOAA's Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, are leading the Biscayne Bay HFA. Working with professors and students at the University of Miami and other institutions, they have been generating scientific papers that can be the basis of guidance documents. Miami Waterkeeper, with competitive funding from the NOAA Habitat Focus Area initiative for five years, has been conducting education and outreach as well as developing and dispensing Best Management Practice guidance documents, reporting apparent regulatory violations, leading guided trips on the Bay for government and civic leaders, and training high-school-level young people in distribution of environmental information.
Specific funding from NOAA for the Biscayne Bay HFA ends in 2020, but local sponsors plan to continue efforts to protect and promote the ecological wellbeing of Biscayne Bay under the Biscayne Bay HFA umbrella. Continuation is well worth it because Biscayne Bay and its parallel reef tract are economic engines that will keep on giving to the South Florida region if their ecological integrity and ecosystem health are reestablished and maintained.
Publications
Majewska, R., Bosak S., Frankovich, T.A., Ashworth, M.P., Sullivan, M.J., Robinson, N.J., Lazo-Wasem, E.A., Pinou, T., Nel. R., Manning, S.R., and Van de Vijver, B. (2019) Six new epibiotic Proschkinia (Bacillariophyta) species and new insights into the genus phylogeny. European Journal of Phycology Volume 54, 2019 Issue 4, 609-631. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1080/09670262.2019.1628307
Wachnicka, A., Browder, J., Jackson, T., Louda, W., Kelble, C., Abdelrahman, O., Stabenau, E., and Avila, C. Hurricane Irma's Impact on Water Quality and Phytoplankton Communities in Biscayne Bay (Florida, USA). Estuaries and Coasts 43: 1217-1234 (2020). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12237-019-00592-4
Zink, I.C., Jackson,T.L., and Browder, J.A. 2018. A Note on the Occurrence of Non-Native Tiger Prawn (Penaeus monodon Fabricius, 1798) in Biscayne Bay, FL, USA and Review of South Florida Sighting and Species Identification. BioInvasions Records (2018) Volume 7, Issue 3: 297-302. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3391/bir.2018.7.3.11
Laura H. McDonnell, Thomas L. Jackson, George H. Burgess, Lindsay Phenix, Austin J. Gallagher, Helen Albertson, Neil Hammerschlag, Joan A. Browder. 2020. Saws and the city: smalltooth sawfish (Pristis pectinata) encounters, recovery potential and research priorities in urbanized coastal waters off Miami, Florida. Endangered Species Research 43:543-553. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3354/esr01085
Our Partners
Biscayne Bay Regional Restoration and Coordination Team, Miami-Dade County, Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Biscayne Bay Aquatic Preserves, Biscayne National Park, Miami Waterkeeper, Florida Sea Grant, Tropical Audubon Society, Clean Water Action, National Parks Conservation Association, University of Miami, Florida International University