EDITOR’S DESK

Fishes, Wishes and Champions

This issue, Bay Soundings welcomes the new year with a special look at the state of the bay’s fisheries, from research seeking to quantify the symbiotic and multiple relationships between habitat, fish and predators to a close-up examination of several keystone species. We are grateful to the scientists at the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission for their work in developing this special report.

We also are delighted to welcome guest columnist Frank Sargeant, the “semi-retired” outdoors editor of the Tampa Tribune, a post he held for more than 24 years, who recently moved from his long-time home on the Little Manatee River in Ruskin to Smith Lake in rural Alabama.

As we celebrate past successes and prepare for the challenges ahead, Bay Soundings offers its readers a collection of special wishes for Tampa Bay from a few stand-out individuals who have graciously agreed to share their wit, wisdom and inspiration (see opposite). If wishes were fishes, we’d all cast wide nets, though we suspect gator-wrestler and Real Florida chronicler Jeff Klinkenberg is going to be sitting by the bay a good long while before his crocodile comes a calling.

To Sallie Parks, Swiftmud Governing Board Member and former Pinellas County Commissioner, who hopes for “more champions willing to lead and more leaders willing to listen,” we share your wish for the Tampa Bay region. As Elie Araj reminds us, we need leaders willing to take up the mantle of sustainable development and embrace a new “triple bottom line” accounting of social, economic and environmental rewards “so our children will continue to enjoy the magnificent bay and watershed that has been entrusted to us.” To these we add our own clarion call, borrowed from America’s 44th President: “Yes we can!”

On a wing and a prayer

Wintertime in Tampa Bay is a spectacle to behold, as Vicki Parsons relates in Birding is Easy in Bay Area (see page 16). Fat fishes are massing in the velvety grass flats near shore, and overhead, a colorful and boisterous profusion of snowbirds – the kind that don’t incite road rage – adorn the clear blue skies. They are another reminder that Tampa Bay is a magical place and that we should all look up a bit more often. So too are they a reminder that we must rededicate ourselves to the fruitful work of preserving the last great spaces and species entrusted to our care.

In upcoming issues, Bay Soundings will explore in-depth the state of the bay’s seagrasses, the ongoing drought and its impacts on the estuary, and opportunities for the bay in a new green economy.

Til then, “best fishes” from the staff at Bay Soundings for a productive and purposeful new year.

— Mary Kelley Hoppe