Eco Discovery Center

Everything is Green or Eco that is good these days, for we have discovered the benefit of paying attention instead of simply trampling stuff. I was amazed just the other day to see a waste bin show up in Police Dispatch with the word Recycling stenciled on the side. Shortly thereafter an explanatory note was added advising us that this was only for non-sensitive paper recycling so I reluctantly removed my (clean) yogurt container from the symbol of the Brave New World. At home recycling comes in two bins- paper and containers. The City has a bit more catching up to do. Down on the waterfront at Truman Annex there lie a couple of squat cement buildings, close to the gorgeous turquoise waters of Key West's inner harbor. These buildings are harbingers of the City's future, not least because they are growing sod on the roof to reduce cooling costs:It's going to be a while before we see a lawn on the flat roof of the Police Station, but the Dr Nancy Foster Eco Discovery Center is new and bringing innovation slowly with it. This is the headquarters of the National Marine Sanctuary in the Lower Keys, and there are 33 new acres of land to be developed by Key West around here now that the Navy has handed the waterfront over to civilian use. The Marine Sanctuary in the Keys is easily accessible to members of the public for the waters are protected and shallow and these islands are littered with boats for rent to go out and enjoy them. From cruise ships on down:The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the grandly named Federal agency works with the State of Florida to protect these waters with their boats:
and with their markers and their buoys:My buddy Robert who has lived in the Keys since 1976 moved from working as a commercial lobsterman to become the waterborne educator of the sanctuary users. His job is to welcome boaters to the sanctuary and then educate them how not to wreck it:The drive to educate is what got the Eco Discovery Center built and a very modern building it is too, inside as well as out:Admission is free, the air conditioning is cold and there is even a movie theater in here, so there are lots of reasons on the face of it to pay this place a visit. However, as a friend of mine said to me, "You need to be prepared to spend a lot of time in there, there's tons to read!" and its not all about the water:The Center really pulls all the habitats together into one web of life. Its not just a matter of not stepping on the hard pressed corals on our reefs, its also a matter of not throwing out trash, not interfering with the life cycles of birds and fish and reptiles; it is all, in short, connected. A point made clear in the movie theater, a painless way to explore the various sticky, buggy environments in the Florida Keys, as seen through the wide eyes of a visitor to the Marine Sanctuary. The movie shows us a child's eye view of the wonders of mangroves and fish habitats in the sanctuary:There are dioramas explaining the world of the animals underwater:And above the waters, in the dry land hammocks:And on the beaches:For a professional diver and educator like Robert the submersible exhibit holds a special place in his heart:I like visiting the Eco Discovery Center, not because I feel the need to discover, or reaffirm my desire to be polite to the planet I call home, but because I like reminding myself, during the winter months how much I am going to enjoy immersing myself in the mysterious waters that surround my island home. And just when they seem to be a little less mysterious than usual a weird event pops into the headlines. Like the visitor from Up North killed by a flying ray that broke her neck when it hit her sitting in the bow of her boat slicing through the water at 25 miles per hour... a ray like this one possibly:I guess it must be a fair representation of a ray but it has those big old Bambi eyes staring down from the ceiling...

I couldn't leave the center without a quick perusal of my favorite habitat, those spindly pine trees that dot the islands. These would be real pines, the ones that ooze sap and carry that particular scent with them, of Mediterranean forests and dry hot summer afternoons.No mention here of Casuarina trees. This building is at the heart of the drive to re-vegetate the Keys with native plants and the Pines of Fort Zachary for instance wouldn't be something I'd bring up with Robert next time we're out for dinner at El Siboney...

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Coincidentally there is an all day meeting scheduled in Key Colony Beach today where sanctuary officials are going to meet and discuss how best they can protect the natural resources of the sanctuary into the future. There are concerns that the reefs are dying at an exponential rate, lobster populations are shrinking and something, they say needs to be done. Saving Paradise one coral, one lobster, one fish at a time, perhaps.