People walking the beaches in Brevard County may have seen a grim sight: starfish washed up onto the sand, victims of the recent hard freeze that chilled the region.
The spiny marine creatures weren’t the only casualties of the cold.
Sea grapes and palms look dead as their leaves turned brown. Tropical plants are toast from freezer burn. Mangroves are wilting, too. And that just might strip us of some of the most solid roots that hold our beach sands and riverbanks in place.
While it is still too soon to tell overall effects of the recent freeze, environmentalists and others are keeping a close eye on all those browned leafy habitats.
Biologists warn these are among what we ought tend to most, but without pruning too soon or without required permits:
Starfish, other marine life go under in harsh winter
Conservationists want us to preserve shorelines and dunes nature’s way: with sea grapes, sea oats, mangroves, spartina grass and other native plants, rather than seawalls and rocks that don’t provide the same habitat benefits to fish, crabs, oysters and other marine life.
Harsh cold often gives no quarter, though, and not just for plants. For many lowly marine dwellers, this was also their winter of discontent.
The record cold that hit Florida early this month was quite heartless in nature, especially for creatures like the heart urchin, starfish and other temperature-sensitive critters that live in the shallows.
The countless nine-armed starfish that recently washed up dead or “stunned” on Brevard beaches live as far north as the Carolinas, but not during these drastic dips.
“The thing is, the change in temperature, they can’t adjust to that quickly,” said Richard Turner, professor emeritus, biological sciences, Florida Institute of Technology.
Starfish and other surf-zone dwellers grow sluggish after the drastic temperature dips and can’t burrow, so then wash in, on their last legs.
You can toss them back for a fighting chance. That’s a crap shoot. A few might make it, but for most it’s tough to throw them far enough so that they won’t just wash right back in. “It makes a difference for that starfish,” Turner said. “Certainly, it does help some of them.”
Of course, there’s plenty of starfish out there, Turner added. The species is not threatened.
Heart urchins could be another likely cold-sensitive creature to wash up, said Turner, past-president of the Florida Academy of Sciences.
Even ghost crabs die from the cold, Turner said. We don’t see those casualties, because they burrow down to survive, never to return from the frigid graves they dug.
The one silver lining to February’s freeze was at least a temporary slow-down of some invasive species, such as iguanas, pythons and their other reptilian ilk.
Grazers to the rescue?
In the lagoon, the degree of hard-freeze fallout we see next could come down to how much the cold fazed the so-called ‘grazers.’ Those are the large and small critters that eat back algae such as the massive Sargassum seaweed already headed Florida’s way and the harmful algal blooms that often doom the lagoon.
Those grazing sea turtles, sea urchins, crabs, shrimp and other marine vegans often get hit worst during hard freezes.
But their key habitats wilt, too, adding insult to critter ‘cold shock.’
Seagrass cold impacts grow uncertain
After a decade of spending on cleanup projects paid for by Brevard’s local half-cent lagoon sales tax, the estuary’s seagrass had finally shown signs of recovery, flourishing in northern Mosquito Lagoon, but still stagnant in other areas of the estuary.
Johnson’s seagrass and turtle grass, for one, historically only grew along the lagoon bottom to about as far north as Sebastian Inlet, so the cold lagoon threatens their recovery in recent years.
What about inland tropical plants and trees?
Beyond the beach and lagoon cold effects, inland plants and trees may be among the most at risk, said Sally Scalera, horticulture agent with University of Florida’s extension service in Cocoa. Scalera notes that in the past decade many residents have planted Royal, coconut and other tropical palms on Brevard’s mainland. Not recommended, she added via email, “because all it takes is one freeze to kill them.”
She recalls the region’s hard freezes in 1983, 1985 and 1989 − the worst of them. Temperatures hit the teens, and Brevard beaches lost their coconut palms and plumeria.
She says there are dos and don’ts to follow after such freezes, which for most species involve giving at least a few weeks before giving up on your plants and trees and not pruning too early (or without a permit, when required).
“I am sad that the freeze reached the barrier islands, but it does happen, and the last time they were hit hard was in 1989,” Scalera added.
Best to check whether you need a permit to prune
Sea grapes are well known for their ability to rebound from the roots, even if the top half of the plant dies. So it’s best to not get too trigger happy with the saw, especially without a permit. Fines can grow steep. As with mangroves, Florida and code enforcement might be unforgiving for those who saw at will.
Sea grapes, sea oats and mangroves are strictly protected under the state laws due to their benefits as habitat and erosion/storm protection.
Since the hard freeze was only a few days, the trunks and roots are likely still alive. And the dead leaves on sea grapes act as insulation from the next cold snap, biologists say. A scrape with a fingernail or knife shows if there’s any green underneath, showing the sea grape branch is still alive.
Mangroves stand strong at Merritt Island refuge, for now
The 1989 ‘Christmas freeze’ is still fresh on the minds of some local conservationists and anglers. They watched the subsequent mass die-off of white, red and black mangroves, roughly in that order.
But red mangroves seem to have been affected the least and are still mostly green, said Kim King-Wrenn, spokeswoman for Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge.
“It looks as though the white mangroves were the hardest hit,” King-Wrenn said via email. “Most of their foliage is brown. However, they may come back. Most still have some greenery and leaves turning brown and dropping off is a sign of stress but not necessarily that the tree is dead.”
Springtime will tell, she added. “We do have some dead fish in our impoundments. Lots of tilapia died. This was expected because they are really a tropical fish,” King-Wrenn said. “Some snook and tarpon also died. Sadly, two devil rays were also found dead.” Those are rare.
This month, the refuge helped rescue 189 juvenile and sub-adult sea turtles, most of which were taken to the Welaka National Fish Hatchery for a few days, then released, she added.
Brevard Zoo also kept some 50 sea turtles warm, then released them to the wild after the weather warmed.
Snook, sea trout, tarpon and tilapia among the first to go
There have been a few reports of tarpon, tilapia, sea trout and catfish floating up dead in the lagoon but nowhere near as bad as what happened after the 2010 cold snap.
“Cold-stunned fish are still being reported,” Duane De Freese, executive director of the Indian River Lagoon National Estuary Program, said Wednesday via email. “No loss of fish is good news, especially loss of snook and spotted sea trout.
“Damage is bad, but maybe not as bad as the 2010 freeze,” De Freese added. “It will take some time to see if mangroves recover.”
Freezes remind why we invest in the lagoon
It’s not so much what dies in the cold but more so about what the cold leaves behind, De Freese explained.
“The big concern is nutrient enrichment from decaying dead fish and dead leaf drop into the IRL (Indian River Lagoon,” De Freese said. “This new load of nutrients could fuel a harmful algal bloom like we saw in 2016.”
That was the year of Brevard’s ‘fish-pocalypse,’ which sent tons of fish and other marine carcasses floating up from Titusville to Melbourne. Cleanups filled dumpsters with dead fish. It was the worst year of lingering, runaway ill effects that began with 2011’s superbloom.
But what happens next is anyone’s ecological guess.
“Even after 47 years, any time I try to predict how the lagoon will respond to a stress event, I’m usually wrong,” De Freese said, adding the the uncertainty is why restoring the estuary is so important.
“The more that we invest in water quality improvements, the healthier the lagoon gets, and the more resilient the system becomes to extreme weather events,” he said.
Better safe than sorry on pruning rules
For questions about pruning sea oats, mangroves or other protected vegetation, call Brevard County Natural Resources Management: 321-633-2016; Brevard County Code Enforcement: 321-633-2086; or Brevard Extension Service: (321) 633-1702.
Tired of wasting money on plants and trees that die?
Check University of Florida’s recommendations about what’s the right thing to plant in the right places: https://ffl.ifas.ufl.edu/about-ffl/9-principles/principle-1-right-plant-/
Contact Waymer at (261-5903 or jwaymer@floridatoday.com. Follow him on X at @JWayEnviro.
This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Catastrophic cold sends chilling effects to Indian River Lagoon, beach
Reporting by Jim Waymer, Florida Today / Florida Today
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
