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The WFSU Ecology Blog

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EcoAdventures

Dude, where’s my water?

by Rob Diaz de Villegas December 6, 2011
by Rob Diaz de Villegas December 6, 2011 0 comment
Rob Diaz de Villegas WFSU-TV

IGOR chip- human appreciation 150

St. Joe Bay is really jumping in the summer. People are everywhere; scalloping, fishing, kayaking and snorkeling. The people are mostly gone in the autumn, as they head back to work and school, and the weather is a little cooler. With less people to scare them off, you see more blue crabs, stingrays, and sharks swimming closer to the shore. It’s my favorite time of year to get footage there. When winter rolls around, the only people out on the water either have to be because they’re working (like Randall and her crew), or they’re just hardcore ecowarriors. It can make for difficult paddling in the winter (though this December is much milder than last year, when we shot this footage).

Super-low tide in St. Joe Bay.

The difficulty doesn’t so much stem from the cold, though it can get cold (especially for a native Floridian who thinks Massachusetts beach water is too chilly in July). The real challenge is the wind and the tides. It makes for a surreal landscape.  It’s mostly devoid of living animals, at least on the surface, but that north wind does push some interesting seagrass bed denizens onto the marsh with the seagrass wrack.

As I noted earlier, it has been milder this year.  Hopefully that holds for our next few EcoAdventure shoots, which include trips down the Wacissa and St. Marks rivers.  And I’ve already started planning some of next year’s shoots as well, so stay tuned!

Dan and Debbie VanVleet, who we interviewed in the video, are the proprietors of Happy Ours Kayak and Canoe Outfitter.
The music in the video was by Bruce H. McCosar.
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Rob Diaz de Villegas

Rob Diaz de Villegas is a senior producer for WFSU-TV, covering outdoors and ecology. After years of producing the music program OutLoud, Rob found himself in a salt marsh with a camera, and found a new professional calling as well. That project, the National Science Foundation funded "In the Grass, On the Reef," spawned the award winning WFSU Ecology Blog. Now in its tenth year, the Ecology Blog recently wrapped its most ambitious endeavor, the EcoCitizen Project. Rob is married with two young sons, who make a pretty fantastic adventure squad.

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iNaturalist became a part of the WFSU Ecology Blog during the EcoCitizen Project in 2019.  Since then, we’ve used it to help identify the many plants and animals we see on our shoots.  And on the Backyard Blog, we show how it can be used to identify weeds and garden insects, to help figure out what’s beneficial or a possible pest.  Below is the iNaturalist profile belonging to WFSU Ecology producer Rob Diaz de Villegas.

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