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Outdoors

A new home for an old friend

TIERRA VERDE -- Skimming across the grass flats in his bay boat, Peter Clark just has to look over his shoulder to see how things are going back at the office.

"Isn't this great?" said Clark, pointing to Tampa BayWatch's new headquarters on Cunningham Key. "You couldn't ask for a better location."

Clark has worked for more than a decade restoring Tampa Bay's oyster bars, sea grass beds and salt marshes, as well as educating the area's youth on the role the estuary plays in our quality of life.

For nine years, Clark and his staff worked out of a tiny office in north St. Petersburg.

"Then I was reading the Times one day, and I saw an advertisement that said, "Own your own island for a million bucks,' " he said. "That started me thinking."

Clark wrote to the owner of the property, who agreed the tiny island on the Pinellas Bayway would make an ideal home for BayWatch. But the environmental group didn't have enough money to pay for the land. So Clark approached Pinellas County and the State of Florida, both of which agreed to foot the bill.

"We think this will make a good home," he said. "We still have a lot of work to do."

BayWatch, which will celebrate its 10th year in 2003, can be proud of its record. Since 1993, BayWatch and its more than 20,000 volunteers have:

-- Planted 368,620 salt marsh grasses in habitat restoration projects, restoring hundreds of acres of wetlands.

-- Constructed 80 sea grass beds in Hillsborough Bay and upper Tampa Bay.

-- Cleared more than 100 birdnesting islands each year of deadly fishing line and removed more than 60 tons of garbage from the bay's shoreline.

-- Built 28 1-ton oyster bars, which help improve water quality, restore hard bottom and reduce erosion.

-- Installed nearly 1,000 oyster reef units along public and private seawalls throughout the bay.

-- Created the Tampa Bay Manatee Watch program, which provides on-the-water educational tools to boaters.

"But I think the thing that I am the most proud of is our wetland nursery program," Clark said. "You can't beat it ... you've got kids involved and we produce a steady supply of salt marsh grass."

There are 15 middle and high schools involved in the program. Each school can produce between 5,000 to 6,000 plants a year, saving taxpayers an estimated $100,000 a year.

Clark is particularly happy with the success of his oyster programs.

"It is amazing to go into an area, see nothing, then return a few months later, and just see it full of life," Clark said.

The bars, made of old oyster shells, serve as a foundation for other forms of life, including barnacles, sea squirts, anemones, sponges, corals and algae.

This, in turn, provides a foraging source for a variety of marine life, including redfish, snook and sheepshead, as well as birds such as ibis, heron and oystercatchers.

Each individual oyster helps clean the bay by filtering 10 gallons of sea water every hour. By stabilizing the bay bottom, oysters also reduce turbidity and help slow the rate of erosion by reducing wave action.

BayWatch also helped the ozone layer when it developed the first compressed natural gas-powered outboard motor. The alternative fuel boat, a 23-foot catamaran with twin Honda four-cycle engines, was featured in dozens of boating magazines and garnered national attention for the member-supported environmental group.

Anglers can ensure that BayWatch's latest initiative meets with similar success. BayWatch staffers have installed 14 monofilament line recyling stations at five popular fishing areas: North Skyway Fishing Pier, Maximo Boat Ramp, Demen's Landing Boat Ramp, Coffee Pot Bayou Boat Ramp and Crisp Park Boat Ramp.

To join Tampa BayWatch or find out what you can do to help protect and restore the bay, call (727) 867-8166 or log on to www.tampabaywatch.org.

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