Mysteries by moonlight

Baby puffers, worm eggs, gobs of jellyfish. Go for a walk on Picnic Island in the evening, and the surf teems with life.

[Times photos: Kathleen Flynn] With flashlights in hand, a "Beachwalk by Moonlight" class sloshes through the tide pools at Picnic Island in search of sea life.

By RON MATUS, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published April 11, 2003

Cianna Ryan, 12, holds a tiny puffer fish that got snagged in her net during the Picnic Island class.

A half-dozen people stared wide-eyed in the moonlight last week as it half rolled, half wobbled down the net they were using to snare marine life at Picnic Island Park.

Sharon Beasley, 55, spastically tapped it with her fingers -- a move that prompted whatever it was to flop furiously and grunt some more.

It must be a "pissed-off puffer fish," Beasley concluded.

Sure enough, tiny eyes and tiny fins seemed to offer evidence of a scared baby puffer made Sumo-like by a big gulp of air. But just as Carly Ryan, 14, picked it up to make sure, it deflated, falling with a tiny splash into a 5-gallon bucket.

Carly yelped: "That's creepy."

And fascinating, too, hopes Pat Cannizzaro, the man who organized the April 4 outing.

Cannizzaro, an environmental studies instructor at Hillsborough Community College, has been leading "Beachwalk by Moonlight" tours at Picnic Island for a decade. With nets and buckets, 10 to 20 people at a time gently plunder shore and sea grass. In about an hour, they accumulate a healthy collection of the slimy, the freaky and the fishy. Then Cannizzaro identifies the loot.

That mass of snot? Worm eggs, he said.

The thing with two eyes on one side of its head? A black-cheeked tongue fish.

The little shrimp? A snack. "Basically a potato chip for any type of fish," he said.

When the tour is over, Cannizzaro hopes a bigger lesson has been digested.

His aim: to show people what's in the bay all around them. And then, to inspire them to see the connections between the water and themselves.

"We don't realize the impact our everyday lives have on it," he said. "If you realize how fragile it is, you might do more to protect it."

The beach walk is offered three or four times a year, and is available to anyone.

Cianna Ryan, 12, inspects a bucket while Bill Beasley reaches in for a critter.

Picnic Island is the perfect spot for it, Cannizzaro said.

The park is isolated. In the evenings, hordes of people aren't swarming over the sand. And healthy sea grass beds are right off shore, providing habitat for all kinds of animals, especially juvenile fish.

Last Friday, a dozen people met by the pier to take advantage.

"My kids think we're weird," said Brandon retiree Bill Beasley, referring to him and his puffer-riling wife, Sharon. "They're like, 'What are you doing tonight?' We told them, 'We're going to go play in the bay.' "

Beverly Stewart said she had waited two years to take the tour with her children, Benjamin, 17, and Laurie, 13. Stewart homeschools them in West Tampa.

"The kids always learn more when they see what they're doing, instead of learning it from a book," she said. "This is a night they'll remember."

As waves lapped the shore, tour participants turned on flashlights and palmed on bug spray.

In the shallows, they swept nets above grass beds.

"Look, a big one!" said Cianna Ryan, 12, scooping a 6-inch flounder from the mesh.

In no time at all, buckets were filling with pinfish, needlefish, hermit crabs, a horseshoe crab, even golfball-sized gobs of transparent jellyfish.

Later, Cannizzaro sat on the pier, explaining the night's catch.

With buckets filled with sea life in front of him, Pat Cannizzaro talks about the sea grass he is holding.

The puffer inflates itself with air or water when it's threatened, in the same way a cat arches its back and bristles, he said. The grunting noise comes from two teeth rubbing together.

Another fish snagged on Friday, the moharra, has evolved with its favorite meal: worms. The moharra doesn't have to pig out with its head down and tail up -- which would make it prone to predators -- because its jaw allows it to chomp at an angle, Cannizzaro said.

He used a fingernail to pry open the fish's mouth, revealing chompers more familiar to fans of the movie Alien.

"He doesn't look happy," Laurie Stewart said.

On a more distressing note, Cannizzaro used a strand of manatee grass as a springboard for a cautionary tale.

Dredging, pollution and boat propellers have destroyed 80 percent of Tampa Bay's grasses in 40 years, he said. A comeback will be slow: One study found it took seven years to regenerate enough sea grass to cover a prop scar as wide as a man's hand, he said.

Ben and Donna Rook of Valrico took the information to heart.

"We're originally from the Midwest, so we're fascinated by the beaches," Ben Rook said.

But until last Friday night, their view was limited to sunsets at Pass-a-Grille.

At Picnic Island, they hit the beach to sift dirt through a screen, as if panning for gold. They unearthed brittle stars, stringy-arm cousins to starfish.

"Hey honey, hold out your hand," Donna Rook told her husband after making a side trip to the water.

When he obliged, she deposited his prize: one shiny, wriggling fish.

Not a sunset, but pretty special, too.

-To sign up for a "Beachwalk by Moonlight" class, call Cannizzaro at 253-7523. Ron Matus can be reached at 226-3405 or matus@sptimes.com .

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