Today I paddled out to the sand dune that now acts as a barricade over the former Midnight Pass. This is a section of Little Sarasota Bay that I have paddled many times, but when I pulled my kayak up onto the bayside beach something was different. For the first time, I realized that I was standing on something artificial. I had always known that the private homeowners had attempted to fill in the inlet, but was led to believe that a hurricane had finished the job. Now the place that I had treated as my hidden getaway in the bay was seen as a place of turmoil and struggle. The pristine secluded beach seemed tainted with the wrongdoings of man and his attempts to control Mother Nature.

 

There must have been a dozen other kayakers on some type of eco-tour and two motor boats anchored in the murky waters along the narrow sand embankment that lined the eastern shore. I climbed over the dunes to the Gulf side and settled down the beach from the tourists, so much for the seclusion that I was accustomed to. A light breeze was blowing diagonal to the shore providing an occasional whiff of what was later determined to be a dead adult loggerhead sea turtle bobbing a few dozen yards off the beach. I was welcomed back to the area with the stench of death; the bay waters behind the former pass can also give off an unpleasant odor when there has been little rainfall. The smell reminded me of how many view Little Sarasota Bay as “dead” now that its lifeline to the Gulf of Mexico is cut off. I overheard the kayak tour leader giving a short lecture on the history of the sand his group was standing on. Most everything he said was in line with what I had heard, and he seemed to be a proponent of bringing the pass back. I walked down and spoke with him briefly about calling the Sea Turtle Research Program to come pick up the carcass whose identity was confirmed with a pair of binoculars. I asked him what he thought of the health of the bay and he said that even though some marine life is still thriving in the waters behind us, he thinks that there is much for potential for more critters with the way things used to be. I asked him if he was concerned about losing some business with the time consuming and garish process of opening the pass. He replied that he would be willing to divert his tour route to some other area if it meant that he could eventually bring people to a park on the shore of a restored Midnight Pass.