Education

The Gulf World Marine Institute stranding team recently released a fully rehabilitated loggerhead sea turtle into the Gulf of Mexico in Panama City Beach. The stranded sea turtle was rescued in March of this year and was found to be emaciated and lethargic. After a few months of rehabilitation at Gulf World Marine Institute the sea turtle was medically cleared and then released back into the Gulf on June 24, 2015, along with a few human friends standing by for support.

The next day we woke up around six in the morning and headed down to Nelson Bay, roughly a 45-minute drive south from the farmhouse. Here we planned to take a helicopter and fly over the lakes to get some aerial shots.

It was a sweltering summer day with little to no cloud coverage, and we were filming a tour of South Walton with the Choctawhatchee Basin Alliance. The tour started in Topsail Hill Preserve State Park, where Park Services Specialist Jeff Talbert and Dr. Sarah Schindele pointed out a plethora of unique plants, explaining the ecology of the park, as well as the steps that are taken to maintain such a distinct and fragile natural area.

This past week my dad showed his latest film, The Florida Wildlife Corridor Expedition: Everglades to Okefenokee, at the Martin Theatre in Historic Panama City.

My Coastal Dune Lake

Ancient crystle dunes
engulfed by a risen sea.
Ocean shrinks to gulf in time,
baring mounds of sugared quartz.

Rare pools of sparkling life are born
to milliniums of nurturing kisses
from a coddling saline surf.

Embracing tides wash life to benthic worlds
as needle rush nurseries feed
flora, fauna, future.

Flyoff vapors, cool and collected,
fall to stream across shore to sea,
barrow for the rapt organic cornucopia
of our ever renewing coastal plash.

Ad·vi·so·ry:  having or consisting in the power to make recommendations but not to take action enforcing them.

The Coastal Dune Lakes Advisory Board is comprised of residents and partners with Walton County, to ensure the protection, health and environmental integrity of the county’s globally rare and imperiled Coastal Dune Lakes and to provide sound recommendations to the Walton County Board of Commissioners.

About two weeks ago, I was sitting in the office and preparing for the first blog I wrote on the coastal dune lakes, and I stumbled across the term “coastal lagoon” on the National Geographic website.

A lagoon is a shallow body of water protected from a larger body of water (usually the ocean) by sandbars, barrier islands, or coral reefs. Lagoons are often called estuaries, sounds, bays, or even lakes. (Emphasis added)

Last week Dad and I came down to Topsail Hill Preserve State Park to do more work for the upcoming Coastal Dune Lakes documentary we are producing.

We accomplished a lot over the four days we were there: