The Nature of Florida with Oscar Corral

In this episode, Oscar interviews Miami Herald editor Curtis Morgan. Curtis is one of the best known environmental journalists in Florida. He has been a reporter or editor directing environmental coverage for close to 30 years. He’a also an avie fisherman that grew up fishing the sea grass flats around South Florida, often taking a 14-foot boat when he was a teenager out into the Gulfstream current.  Since that time, he’s come to know the issues affecting the health of the everglades, Florida Bay and Biscayne bay intimately. He talks about the long gone Miami River rapids; the foolish decision by local leaders to dump almost all of South Florida’s partially treated raw sewage a mile and a half from Miami’s world-renown beaches; and the hopes for bringing back some of the lost beauty through everglades and Biscayne bay restoration.

Stel Bailey is a citizen scientist and cancer cluster survivor who spent the last year documenting the unprecedented starvation deaths of a record number of manatees around the state of Florida. She describes the heartbreaking experience of watching manatee carcasses get disposed of as simple trash, and the fight to stop the massive pollution of Florida’s waterways. She says - and scientists concur - that manateees are starving to death because there has been a widespread die-off of seagrass beds around the state. That’s the manatee’s main food source. And scientists say the sea grass is dying off because of nutrient pollution in Florida’s bays and estuaries. 

The first time Lauren L. Hill protested for an environmental cause, she was 17, and a woman spat at her. But instead of stopping her, it encouraged her to keep speaking out for the natural world. Today's she uses her platform as a famous surfer to bring attention to environmental issues.

Here's an excerpt from Lauren Hill's website:
"Lauren L. Hill is a professional surfer, writer and director who has spent the past decade exploring new waves and documenting surf cultures around the world through an eco-feminist lens. She develops projects that revolve around the power of storytelling to build community and inspire action to protect our planet.

Raised on the small barrier island of Anastasia, Lauren grew up in the Atlantic, freshwater springs and brackish waterways of Florida’s East Coast. She was a U.S. Women’s Longboard Champion (under 18) and has degrees in Environmental and Social Science from Stetson University.

Lauren writes for a variety of publications, ranging from academic to mainstream media in the US, Europe and Australia. She was a senior writer for Surfing World Magazine and has appeared in award-winning documentary films including The Church of the Open Sky, Bella Vita, Beyond the Surface, The Heart & The Sea, and Transparentsea Voyage.

Now based near Byron Bay, Australia, amongst the saltwater country of the Bundjalung nation, Lauren hosts The Waterpeople Podcast and recently authored She Surf: The Rise of Female Surfing, a celebration of the women stretching the boundaries of the sport and art of wave riding. Lauren is currently writing about food systems and permaculture design, directing a film about the physics of surfing and spending ample time in the ocean with her family."

Jim Durocher is one of the leaders of a statewide campaign to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot in Florida in 2024 to grant rights to nature. The Rights of Nature movement is just getting started around the United States, and in 2020, Florida took a leading role when Orange County, home of Orlando, became the largest municipality to grant rights to nature. The vote there was overwhelmingly in support. 89% of people approved the law. In Florida, getting 89% of people to agree on anything seems like a fantasy. But it actually happened. Now the activists behind that law want to take it to the voters statewide. Durocher explains that laws in Florida that are intended to regulate the environment for clean air and water are failing miserably, and measures such as Rights of Nature are one of the few tools left to save what’s left of Florida’s unique springs, rivers, beaches and forests.

From the first time Stephen Davis visited the everglades, he has been drawn by the unique beauty of its wetlands landscape. As the Chief Science Officer of The Everglades Foundation, he has pursued the restoration of the everglades and expanded on the science and knowledge that guides that complex task.  

Florida is the epicenter of phosphate mining in the United States, and one of the largest in the world. The practice of phosphate mining is to create fertilizer for crops. But it is also one of the most destructive environmental practices in Florida, which has about half a million acres that have either been mined, or identified for mining. Environmental lawyer Rachael Curran explains why the practice is so destructive. In 2021, for example, a giant gypsum stack, which is a massive pile of radioactive, toxic phosphogypsum waste used by the industry to stack their byproduct, sprung a major leak near Tampa Bay. In order to prevent the entire dam at Piney Point from collapsing, the state of Florida, through the Department of Environmental Protection, had to release hundreds of millions of gallons of toxic water into Tampa Bay. There are more than two dozen “gyp stacks” around Florida, several of which have had problems with leaks and sinkholes. As Florida’s population grows and water and wildlife become more scarce and valuable, can phosphate mining continue to co-exist in Florida, or will the industry's environmental troubles become more than the state can handle? 

Author and environmental journalist Craig Pittman, with his usual sense of wit and satire, talks about Florida's ongoing environmental struggles and the political backdrop that perpetuates them. It seems there is broad and strong public support across all political stripes to fix Florida's environmental problems. But political leaders generally ignore them. Craig explains why.  

Jennifer Diaz runs The Everglades Foundation's educational program, which helps schools with curriculum and materials to teach kids about the Everglades. The foundation's pioneering work in education has created a loose model that schools and organizations around the state can follow to help bring important information about environmental issues to school children around Florida. She talks about kids, camping and her love of Florida's wild places.

Michelle Colson, also known as Mermaid Michi, has amassed a million social media followers on TikTok and Instagram. They flock to her posts to see her lip sync and dance underwater in crystal clear Florida springs. She leverages her fame to bring awareness to the degradation of Florida's unique fresh water springs, and in the process spreads awareness about environmental issues to younger generations. Her instagram handle, @guardianofthesprings has become a well known source for unique underwater sing-alongs, mermaid culture and vital information about Florida's springs.

Captain Benny Blanco grew up in the land-locked Miami suburb of Kendall. But that didn't stop him from biking to Miami's coast often when he was a boy. Today, he is a fishing captain with his own television show, and one of the leaders of clean water advocacy organization Captains for Clean Water. Does he reveal the best fishing spots in South Florida? Listen in and find out.