One of this country’s most spectacular, pristine and productive areas of shallow grass flats, home to the world’s greatest shallow-water sight-cast fishery for trophy redfish and seatrout, might be turning into a toxic cesspool. The New York Times on August 7 called the Indian River Lagoon estuary “one of the richest marine ecosystems in the continental United States.” It then went on to talk of a “cross-species murder mystery, a trail of hundreds of deaths,” here, wondering if the deaths are symptomatic of “the collapse of the natural balance that sustains the 156-mile estuary’s northern reaches.” Murdered in the past year have been nearly 300 manatees, scores of bottlenose dolphins and hundreds of pelicans. The exact cause of death and the perpetrator have not yet been identified, but there are theories and suspects. The most ...![Sport Fishing Mag]()
