But this year, the swarming insects were nowhere to be seen, and Norman Leppla, a professor with the University of Florida’s Department of Entomology and Nematology, is getting calls from across the state asking why.

Leppla fell in love with these particular bugs in 1972, when he moved from Arizona to the Sunshine State on a research grant. His first paper on lovebugs, published two years later, studied their behaviors in Paynes’ Prairie, just outside of Gainesville.

At that point, the lovebug outbreak still was at its peak and Leppla was fascinated by them.

The agglomeration of all his lovebug knowledge is chronicled in Leppla’s 2018 article Living with lovebugs. He’s now considering writing a sequel: Living without lovebugs.

While questions about the insects are swirling, Leppla said because lovebugs don’t contribute much to Florida’s ecology, research on their apparent demise would be unlikely to get funding.

The Tampa Bay Times recently spoke with Leppla about what may have happened to Florida’s nonessential nuisances.

Q: When did you realize the lovebugs had disappeared?

I didn’t really notice it until about maybe last year or the year before. They’ve just sort of tapered off and this year — or at least this season — I haven’t seen any. It just seemed like, “OK, it’s a natural variation.” But then they didn’t rebound and I was very surprised. I have a holly tree outside of my office window, and they’re always abundant there because it’s a source of nectar. But there’s nothing.

Q: Do we know what happened to them?

Well, people are noticing and would like to have answers, but it’s really not an area where we could get funding to do research. There is quite a bit of concern about declining insect populations. And maybe somebody would want to include (lovebugs) with some studies right now that focus on things like honeybees and pollinators.

Q: And lovebugs aren’t big pollinators, right?

No. We don’t even think of them as pollinators. They are basically thought of as nuisances. That’s a real classification. It’s insects that don’t bite or sting or transmit diseases or do things that harm other animals and plants. Those would be nuisances.

Q: Could their disappearance be related to this year’s drought conditions and record-breaking heat?

Florida is really, really diverse in habitats. We’ll get rainfall in one area and drought in another 30 miles [away]. So there’s so much variability in the habitat that that would not account for the lovebug decline.

They’re pretty hardy, but they’re also in lots of different habitats. So, all in all, there are plenty of ways that we would still have lovebugs in certain parts of Florida.

The larvae can move. If they have a bit of drainage — like on the side of a highway — they can move up and down, so they don’t drown or desiccate. They are under things like leaves, cow manure, just plain, decaying plants. So they get a certain amount of protection.

One thing that really would cause them to decline is their attraction to automobile exhaust. But that’s never caused them to go away before. I guess the only other thing would be some sort of general pressure.

It’s got to be variables that we look at, and that’s obviously climate, habitat, pollution. They’re just standard reasons that we look at and wonder, “What happened?”

Q: Scientists are warning of an “insect apocalypse.” Forty percent of all insect species are declining globally, and a third are endangered. Why is this happening?

It’s gotten to the point where it’s alarming. Entomologists are concerned about it, and we’re doing more and more to try to figure out what’s going on, but it’s just that our habitats are changing. Our climate is changing, and it’s putting pressure on lots of organisms.

Certainly, we’re tracking all kinds of vertebrates. As you know, populations are declining and habitats going away. We’re concerned that insects are part of that problem.

They’re part of the food chain. I guess even lovebugs have entered it. In the case of lovebugs, they’re invasive. Our ecosystem doesn’t depend on them, so they’re not that big of a concern.

Nobody seems like they wanted them to come back, but people are asking. I’m surprised there’s quite a bit of interest in wanting to know why they went away, and I wish I could give you an answer, but I don’t know, either.

Q: You’ve studied these insects for decades and seen populations wax and wane. Do you expect them to bounce back?

I don’t think so.

This continuous decline for three years indicates that something has changed. The flowers that typically attract them are abundant but the insects are absent.

Q: What could have caused lovebugs to decline in Central Florida?

Lovebugs have occurred over a wide geographical area and in a range of habitats. It is unlikely that environmental conditions have changed significantly everywhere in Central Florida. It is more likely that lovebugs have been attacked by a parasite or pathogen.

If so, these organisms require hosts for continued reproduction and may not be limited to lovebugs. This hypothesized situation would keep lovebugs from resurging.

Honestly, I can’t accurately predict what will happen to lovebugs in Central Florida.

The town hall, moderated by Tampa Police Chief Lee Bercaw, comes less than two weeks after dozens of residents and business owners spoke at a Tampa City Council meeting to push back against a proposal to close Ybor bars at 1 a.m. for the next six months.

Tuesday night, some community members decried Ybor’s clustered bar scene, but other longtime residents said the neighborhood was still a safe place despite what happened last month.

Many of the two dozen who offered input to Bercaw, police officials and City Council members in attendance asked for more youth outreach efforts and fewer guns on the streets.

Dionne Neal, 53, moved to Tampa in 2019 so that her son Dyante could live with her and enroll in Hillsborough Community College to finish his associate’s degree.

In 2019, the 25-year-old student was punched and killed outside a bar on East Seventh Avenue in Ybor. Neal said she hoped to see a curfew for minors that would keep them off the streets late at night.

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“I don’t want to see another Tay Tay,” she said.

Bercaw said dispatch calls and even the number of guns confiscated in Ybor doubles in the early morning hours compared to those before midnight. He said 34 guns were seized Monday night — 10 of them before midnight and 24 afterward.

“After midnight is the witching hour,” Bercaw said.

On Oct. 29, an argument broke out in the early morning between two groups and shots rang out near the 1600 block of East Seventh Avenue, police say. Two were killed and 16 injured — 15 by gunfire.

While police have not released the victims’ names, citing Marsy’s Law, family members have identified both 14-year-old Elijah Wilson and 20-year-old Harrison Boonstoppel as the two people killed in the incident.

Police arrested Tyrell Phillips, 22, hours after the shooting. Phillips has since pleaded not guilty after prosecutors charged him with one count of second-degree murder with a firearm. Investigators are still looking for at least two additional shooters.

Eric Schiller, the owner of Gaspar’s Grotto, asked Bercaw to stop closing the streets when Ybor businesses close for the night.

“I feel like a broken record because I’ve said this same damn speech about every five years to as many people as I possibly can,” he said.

Bercaw defended the decision to close the streets along Ybor’s bars when those businesses close. He said it allows the large wave of bargoers to exit safely without risk of being hit by a vehicle.

“That’s the million-dollar question is whether to leave the streets open or whether or not to,” Bercaw said. “There’s a sweet spot where we feel like we have to close them when the public is coming out of the nightclubs. The sidewalks can’t handle the volume.”

‘Can you get my son back to me?’ Tampa parents grieve after Ybor shooting

Niki Carraway, 44, of Brandon, said she regularly attends the Police Department’s Town Hall Tuesday events and the turnout Tuesday night was the largest she’d ever seen.

“What’s happening in our community is not a police problem and it’s not a club scene problem,” she said. “This is a community problem. And as a community, we have got to start to come together.”

She urged adults to check in with troubled young people.

Prosecutors file murder charge against Ybor City shooting suspect

“Our youth is our future,” she said. “And if we don’t do something about it, we’re going to lose them.”

Calvin Johnson, the department’s deputy chief of community outreach, said this work starts at home.

“A lot of these shootings is within — like the chief said — about 10 or 15 seconds because somebody has not told their child to take a deep breath when you get upset. They haven’t had that conversation,” he said.

“I think that we’re doing everything that we can possibly do to help reduce gun violence. But what I don’t want you to leave here tonight with was thinking that your involvement doesn’t mean anything. We need you as ambassadors out there.”

She said she felt it while reading comforting words from family and friends, and again when she went to a funeral home Wednesday to make arrangements for Harrison Boonstoppel. But that feeling came crashing down after she received a call from the medical examiner’s office.

“And then I found out he was shot three times,” she said. “I’m still kind of in disbelief about it all.”

On Wednesday, Brucie Boonstoppel said they told her that Harrison Boonstoppel had been shot in the spleen, liver and heart.

Fifteen others were wounded by gunfire, and another person was injured but not shot, police said. They have not released the names of any of them, citing Marsy’s Law, but Brucie Boonstoppel says her son was one of those killed. Family members of Elijah Wilson, 14, have identified him as the other fatality early Sunday.

Since learning of her son’s death, Brucie Boonstoppel has barely slept. She said she’s been through fits of intense crying, and she started taking sedatives to combat bouts of insomnia.

Brucie Boonstoppel said her son told her that he and his two friends were stopping by Ybor after leaving a nearby Halloween party. Then one friend showed up at her door and told her Harrison Boonstoppel had been shot.

“They were only there 20 minutes,” she said, holding back tears. “They weren’t there for the party. They were just there to check it out. And they happened to be right by where the argument started.”

A gunfight broke out after the argument between two groups on the 1600 block of East Seventh Avenue, police say.

Police arrested Tyrell Phillips, 22, on a charge of second-degree murder with a firearm after he approached officers and admitted to firing a gun just hours after the shooting, according to a pretrial detention motion.

Phillips is charged in the death of the 14-year-old. There have been no arrests or charges brought yet in the 20-year-old’s death.

The shooting has shaken the community and reignited discussions about the future of nightlife in Ybor.

On Wednesday, Tampa City Council member Gwen Henderson proposed a six-month curfew that would close businesses in Ybor at 1 a.m., and Tampa Mayor Jane Castor said she supported a juvenile curfew in the area starting at 1 a.m.

About 50 residents, community leaders and advocates came together Wednesday evening to mourn those killed. Roosters bobbed and crowed between the crowd at Centennial Park in Ybor City.

Brucie Boonstoppel said she has been a longtime advocate for increasing gun regulations, but “never in a million years” did she imagine she would be telling her own story about gun violence.

Rep. Dianne Hart, a Democrat who represents East Tampa in the Florida House of Representatives, said her 19-year-old grandson was there when the shots were fired. He came home with skinned knees after dropping to the floor trying to evade gunshots.

“He had to run for his life,” she said.

Hart said that gun violence is frequent in her district and appears to be increasing.

“This was a true tragedy Sunday morning,” she said. “But we have a tragedy here every day.”

Hart called for a curfew and crackdown on local clubs that she said may be turning a blind eye to dangerous behavior. She said she hopes people don’t feel unsafe in Ybor after the shooting.

“I believe they will be safe,” Hart said. “I hope that this is an isolated incident.”

Local gun violence advocacy groups Moms Demand Action, Rise Up for Peace and Safe and Sound Hillsborough hosted the somber event.

Gail Powell-Cope, an organizer with Tampa’s Moms Demand Action, said she tried to create a quiet, solemn space that allowed people to grieve.

The gathering began with a moment of silence for the victims.

“Today we’re focused on the two young men who lost their lives, and their families and friends,” she said. “We want to lift them up. We want to support them. We want to do anything we can to help ease their burden.”

Powell-Cope said commonsense gun laws are needed to keep children safe. She called for a ban on “assault-style weapons.”

“I hope that people roll up their sleeves and do the hard work it takes to prevent this kind of thing — not only what happened here in Tampa, but other kinds of violence and suicide as well,” she said. “Things don’t change overnight, and they don’t change by wishing it.”

Police said Tuesday they are looking for at least two additional people who fired shots, and they urged anyone with photos or videos from the incident to submit them to a portal here.

For nearly four months, Lewis has overseen a lab in the Florida Keys housing more than 5,000 refugee corals rescued from scorching offshore waters.

Her staff at the Keys Marine Laboratory on Long Key have faced swirls of heartbreak and hope since mid-July — when a mass coral evacuation began.

Heartbreak came in those first few weeks when scores of elkhorn and staghorn corals arrived at the lab, bleached or dead, as an unprecedented marine heat wave swept through offshore coral nurseries. Temperatures pushing the mid-90s arrived sooner than anticipated and caught the restoration community off-guard.

And then came the hope, however fleeting, that the first-of-its-kind evacuation and rescue operation was helping keep many corals alive. Corals regained their color and strength and in recent days have passed veterinarian health inspections.

Now, Lewis is finally coming up for air as the immediate coral crisis abates.

On Monday, a restoration team took roughly 360 corals from the lab and drove them north to Tavernier, where divers boated the animals back to their offshore nurseries. The 13-hour operation was the first journey in what could be a weekslong effort to put every rescued coral back at sea.

“So many of these corals came in gasping their last breath,” said Lewis, the lab’s director. “Every single coral that we can put back out there is a success.”

As of mid-September, Florida’s coral reefs — the only coral reef system in the continental United States — faced the equivalent of nearly 24 weeks of harmful ocean temperatures, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Coral Reef Watch.

With water that hot, for that long, vast swaths of offshore corals in the Keys died after bleaching earlier in the summer. Corals lose their color and bleach, a signal of prolonged stress, when they expel the tiny algae species living in their tissues.

It could be months before scientists know the true extent of the damage and loss to Florida’s reef, according to Jacquie De La Cour, the operations manager at Coral Reef Watch. It’s still unclear how already vulnerable corals will now respond to disease, potentially exacerbating the mortality crisis.

But for now, coral restorers are celebrating the small victory of returning the first batch of healing corals back to their offshore Tavernier nursery. Ocean temperatures in recent weeks have dipped to 80 degrees Fahrenheit, roughly 12 degrees cooler than the summer peak.

Stormy seas finally calmed this week and gave divers a short window to kick off the initial return mission, according to Phanor Montoya-Maya, the reef restoration program manager for the Coral Restoration Foundation. He said all rescued corals should hopefully be out of the Keys Marine Laboratory and back to their offshore homes by December.

“These are challenging times,” Montoya-Maya said in an interview Tuesday. But morale was high Monday as the first corals were planted back on the seafloor. “We can take this as an opportunity to continue learning from the crisis, and sharing with others not just how bad things can get, but also what the good things are that we can do.”

New ideas born from coral crisis

Unprecedented heat caused coral restorers to come up with unprecedented solutions.

One idea that stemmed from the crisis was to relocate corals to deeper, cooler ocean waters instead of bringing them to land-based labs.

Ken Nedimyer, the founder and technical director of the nonprofit Reef Renewal USA, Inc., helped spearhead the experimental effort to bring corals to colder, 70-feet-deep waters. In late July, there was a roughly 2-degree water temperature difference from the hotter water in the shallows.

About 40 divers from all over the world traveled to the Keys to help with the relocation, Nedimyer said.

“Getting them there and then getting them out of the sun seemed to make all the difference in the world,” he said. Every two weeks, divers would score the corals’ health from 0 to 5, with zero being healthy and five being bleached bone-white. Within a few weeks, the corals brought to deeper waters had improved to a 1.

“They looked really good, and they’ve stayed healthy,” Nedimyer said in an interview. Teams hope to start bringing the corals back to shallower water as soon as rough seas calm in the deeper waters, he said.

Warm summer water temperatures lasting into fall meant restoration efforts had to wait until cooler waters finally returned to South Florida, said Liv Williamson, an assistant scientist of marine biology and ecology at the University of Miami.

“It was cold the other day,” Williamson said. “Two months ago you were baking in the water.”

During recent dives in the Florida Keys, Williamson said, she was happy to find corals she had watched bleach this summer were recovering and regaining their color.

It’s not just the Keys Marine Laboratory returning rescued corals back to sea. Over the last few weeks, the University of Miami has returned hundreds of staghorn and elkhorn corals from about 150 genetically unique individuals.

“We want to make sure we have lots and lots of genotypes because that’s where the genetic diversity comes from,” Williamson said. “And genetic diversity equals resilience.”

Williamson said one silver lining of this summer’s bleaching crisis is an increased awareness of the need for a healthy reef in Florida.

“I feel confident that there’s a lot of attention on it and, therefore, there’ll be funding and people to do as much as we can do,” she said. “It’s a question of whether what we’re capable of doing is enough.”

Williamson said climate change shares much of the blame for the extreme temperatures, which were made worse by this year’s El Niño.

Her research focuses on finding more resilient corals and helping pass on their heat-tolerant genes to outplanted corals, in an effort to keep up with warming oceans.

Williamson and her team are monitoring the new corals spawned earlier this summer to see if their heat tolerance matches those in the parent corals.

“That’s ongoing for the next bunch of months — really into next year,” she said.

‘We’re crossing our fingers’

The coral community was surprised by how early the heat actually arrived this past summer. Despite widespread collaboration, branching corals like the elkhorn and staghorn species saw high mortality rates, Lewis said.

With an El Niño weather pattern likely to linger through next year and the effects of climate change exacerbating extreme heat, coral scientists are bracing for the worst again next summer. The Keys Marine Laboratory will be better prepared if a similar marine heat wave strikes next year or in the more distant future. For Lewis, it’s a matter of when, not if.

“We’re crossing our fingers, but the bottom line is this: We’re better prepared for the next time,” Lewis said.

The lab, casually dubbed by scientists as a “coral halfway house,” is home to 60 saltwater tanks that range in size from 40 gallons to 1,000 gallons. The lab is just south of Islamorada and right in the middle of the Florida Keys island chain, making it a central landing spot for several coral rescue groups.

Before the coral crisis began, the lab had fewer than 40 water pumps to keep saltwater flowing over corals to mimic ocean currents. But the sheer amount of rescued coral pouring into the facility this past summer forced the lab to triple the number of pumps to 120.

The tally of new equipment helps underscore that emergency growth: The lab now has 20 new tables for housing saltwater tanks and new adjustable shades to veil corals from harsh sunlight, and discussions already are underway to expand the facility further — all to prepare for the inevitability of a future marine heat wave, Lewis said.

“Everything happened so fast,” Lewis said. “But we’ve learned an awful lot about keeping these very highly stressed corals in captivity.”

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These elkhorn and staghorn corals — recognized by their iconic branching arms that provide habitat for hundreds of species — are some of the most vulnerable among reefs.

Just weeks after spawning season, more than 90% of those parent corals are dead.

Elkhorn corals are already considered “functionally extinct” in the upper Keys, and other elkhorn and staghorn populations in the Florida Reef are following suit, according to Liv Williamson, an assistant scientist of marine biology and ecology at the University of Miami. That means there are a small number of individual corals left in the only living barrier reef in the continental United States — the world’s third-largest. It stretches about 360 miles from Dry Tortugas National Park to the St. Lucie Inlet — but they can’t reproduce enough in the wild to support a viable population.

Only a few hundred unique individuals of these corals are left in all of Florida: about 150 elkhorn and 300 staghorn, according to a July update from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Researchers have called this summer’s record ocean temperatures the worst bleaching event in Florida’s history, and they harvested corals from reefs in efforts to save them. Throughout the summer, scientists repeatedly warned that this loss of color could soon give way to loss of life. Now, the death toll is becoming evident.

“We just see a lot of corals that are fully dead at this point,” Williamson said.

She returned to the same Key Largo reef every two weeks during the summer. She said she’s watched the animals she studies bleach and die.

The dying elkhorns and staghorns in Key Largo spawned in early August, providing new corals to rebuild reefs and a wave of hope among researchers.

Still, Williamson said it’s difficult to be optimistic about restoring these populations.

“Those elkhorn and staghorn were the products of restoration efforts that had been really successful, and then this one summer just wiped them out,” she said. “So what’s to keep that from happening in the future?”

Staghorn and elkhorn corals declined throughout Florida and the Caribbean for decades, Williamson said.

In the 1980s, the staghorn and elkhorn coral populations declined by 97% due to white band disease, which kills the coral’s tissues, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Where there were once “vast thickets” of these corals, populations now consist “mostly of isolated colonies or small groups of colonies,” the agency said. Only off the coast of the U.S. Virgin Islands is there habitat where elkhorn populations are considered stable, though few in numbers.

Climate change, fallout from coastal runoff and other human impacts were also to blame for both species’ declines, Williamson said.

“In fact, they are really the first iconic species that we started to lose in big numbers in the region,” Williamson said.

About 10 years ago, their dwindling population along the Florida Reef spurred intervention. A 2012 study showed elkhorn populations in the upper Keys dropped by 21% from 2004 to 2010.

Since then, the Coral Restoration Foundation — which helped restore Williamson’s Key Largo reef — has planted more than 220,000 corals onto Florida’s reef.

But now they are nearly wiped out — setting back years of restoration efforts, Williamson said. She estimates only 10% of the elkhorn and 5% of the staghorn in Key Largo survived. In the lower Keys, where waters are even hotter, entire reefs have been wiped out.

Coral Restoration Foundation teams visited Sombrero Reef in July and found “100% coral mortality,” according to a news release. At the nonprofit’s nursery in Looe Key, a popular dive spot, 5,600 staghorn and elkhorn corals had either bleached or died.

If the elkhorn and staghorn corals on Florida’s reefs die, Williamson said, there would be nothing left of the species in the region.

“We are probably not there just yet, as I assume there will be a handful of elkhorn corals that survive this year, but we are teetering on the edge,” she said.

Williamson said heat stress and bleaching weren’t the only factors in the die-off. She’s seeing disease wreak havoc on corals already weakened by hot waters.

“In some cases, the tissue actually still had a good amount of color, but there were these huge patches of tissue that were just sloughing off,” she said.

The relationship between bleaching and coral diseases isn’t fully understood, Williamson said, but studies show that reefs may be less susceptible to disease when bleached. This is because when corals bleach, they expel the algae that helps them photosynthesize. Diseases attack the algae on corals, so if the algae have already left starving corals, they are not as much at risk of getting sick.

While some coral diseases are spreading across Florida’s hot waters, researchers will be bracing for another round of mortalities once waters cool this fall and winter and algae return to the surviving corals.

“That’s when I kind of worry about seeing disease take off more — sort of after recovery,” Williamson said.

Researchers still don’t quite know the exact toll heat and disease have already taken on Florida’s corals this year. Williamson said it could be months before those numbers are crunched.

There’s one big reason: It’s still hot.

Surface water temperatures have returned to abnormally high levels after a brief cool-off brought by hurricane activity, according to Ian Enochs, who leads the coral program at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Lab.

There’s no telling when the water temperatures will cool for the rest of the year.

“There’s not like a seasonal cutoff date,” Enochs said. “It depends on climate. It depends on the weather patterns.”

Still, Enochs said he’s seeing “signs of resilience,” such as color returning to some corals and a better-than-expected spawning season.

“That doesn’t mean we’re out of the woods — far from it,” he said.

About 84,000 elkhorn coral larvae were spawned this summer at the Florida Aquarium, said Keri O’Neil, director of the aquarium’s Coral Conservation Program. While that number doesn’t break any records, it exceeded expectations for a population that has been under tremendous stress.

“We are raising, you know, thousands of new coral offspring to hopefully start rebuilding the reef,” O’Neil said.

In addition to controlled spawning in coral labs, Williamson said spawning numbers in the wild are equally encouraging.

She joined efforts to collect wild baby corals from dying elkhorns and staghorns in August. Williamson said the corals are holding up well in their new, controlled lab environment.

“So far, we just don’t see signs that these babies are impaired as a result of having had their parents be under so much stress,” she said. “That’s a huge relief.”

While elkhorn and staghorn corals saw the worst death tolls this summer, Williamson stressed that populations are holding strong across other species. For instance, heat-tolerant, hard corals living in reefs offshore of Miami and Broward County aren’t taking nearly as heavy losses.

Williamson said she has done as much as she can for the Key Largo reef; she spent the summer documenting which parent corals held up best against the heat, which could give a clearer picture of which baby corals have a better chance of survival if returned to open waters.

“Unfortunately, now that everything is dead at our site, there’s kind of not a big point in going there again,” Williamson said.

Instead, she said she’ll start visiting other sites while searching for a way to restock reefs with more resilient corals. While the state of these coral populations is dire, Williamson said not all parts of the Florida Reef look as wounded as Key Largo.

“Our coral reef is still here,” she said. “It’s just going to be significantly damaged.”

This story was produced in partnership with the Florida Climate Reporting Network, a multi-newsroom initiative founded by the Miami Herald, the South Florida Sun Sentinel, The Palm Beach Post, the Orlando Sentinel, WLRN Public Media and the Tampa Bay Times.

They are state parks — lacking the accessibility and white sand beaches to the south. Instead, these barrier islands are home to redfish, loggerhead turtles and gulls.

Hurricane Idalia’s storm surge widened island passes, thrashed vegetation and displaced nesting wildlife. In exchange, coastal Pinellas — the most densely populated county in Florida with 3,425 people per square mile — was largely protected from the worst of Idalia’s surge.

Historically, these islands are constantly changing, said Al Hine, a marine geologist and professor at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg.

Honeymoon Island and Anclote Key are the more stable of the local barrier islands, according to Hine. This is the unlikely benefit of a seagrass die-off in the 1950s that destabilized sand deposits off the coast and washed sand ashore nearby islands.

“So, Anclote Key grew by 30% of its entire length within just a decade or so,” Hine said.

Just as natural phenomena can build beaches, they can also take them away. Boaters, scientists and environmental stewards noticed an eastward shift of these local barrier islands in the wake of Idalia.

“That’s how they actually maintain themselves,” Hine said. “That sand is eroded from the front side and pushed to the back side. So, the whole island migrates into the lagoon.”

Davina Passeri, an oceanographer with the U.S. Geological Survey, said barrier islands act as an important buffer zone during storms.

“Along these barrier islands, the dunes are really the first line of defense against water levels and storm surge,” she said.

Dunes block the impact of waves crashing into beaches, which protects coastline infrastructure and reduces inland flooding.

Natural processes eventually wash sand back onto eroded beaches, but Passeri said this can take up to a decade.

The real danger that lies in eroding shorelines is the chance of hurricanes reaching a barrier island already weakened by a previous storm.

“That makes your beach more vulnerable to storm impacts the following year,” she said.

These photos taken by the Tampa Bay Times show chinks in the armor left by Hurricane Idalia on Pinellas’ northern barrier islands.

Anclote Key

Barbara Hoffman, 66, is the president of Friends of Anclote Key, a volunteer organization that manages public access to the state park’s historic lighthouse.

The island is 3 miles off the mainland, with no road access. Hoffman’s first trip to Anclote Key after Idalia was aboard her husband’s seaplane, where Hoffman said she got a bird’s-eye view of the erosion.

“On the west side of the island — where the cabbage palm trees are — looks like a lot of that beach is gone,” Hoffman said.

The island saw about 3 feet of storm surge during Idalia, which was caught on a park ranger’s outdoor camera.

In addition to the knocked-back vegetation, a few lost generators and minor delays to the lighthouse restoration project, Hoffman said the storm wiped out sea turtle eggs during a critical nesting period.

“The sea turtle nesting for the season was a washout,” Hoffman said.

Anclote Key is the northernmost isle along Florida’s Gulf Coast for sea turtle nesting before reaching the Panhandle. Idalia brought surge waters that pummeled nests for about 12 hours. Hoffman said all 10 of the island’s endangered loggerhead sea turtle nests were destroyed.

Hoffman said she’s already seeing signs that Anclote Key is bouncing back. Bald eagles are returning to their nests. In two weeks, the sea oats, beaten down by surge, will prop back upright. Changes to the barrier islands are normal, she said.

“It’s part of their life. It’s not like anyone lives out there,” she said. “The islands just kind of moved a little bit, but they looked good. They looked really good.”

Three Rooker Island

Capt. Brian Mathay has worked as a fishing guide in Pinellas for 18 years. He said it doesn’t take much for the sands to shift. A hurricane or just a strong wind could dramatically change the channels he navigates from one day to the next.

Taking his boat out after the storm, Mathay said Idalia’s worst scarring showed on Three Rooker Island. A channel recently formed through the middle of Three Rooker was widened by the storm.

“Just over the last 10 years, it’s broken apart,” he said. “There’s now like an 8-foot pass in the middle.”

Mangroves and bird habitats were battered by storm surge and high winds, Mathay said.

“There’s almost no trees left on it at all,” he said. “Whereas before, there was a bunch of trees and the bulrush and the grass and all the seagulls and terns nested in. That’s just all gone.”

Honeymoon Island

Fishing trips out of Honeymoon Island, one of the most visited of these northern barrier islands, are Mathay’s bread and butter.

He noticed a new cut-through, about 1 mile south of the island’s northern tip. Idalia blew a hole through the island, and he said continued erosion would open that pass even more.

“It used to just be you can see through to the beach, but now there’s water rushing out there on the high tide,” he said. “With the tides and everything, it starts washing it out more and more.”

The 1921 Tarpon Springs Hurricane, the last major storm to hit the Tampa Bay area, cut Hog Island in two and created Honeymoon and Caladesi islands. The channel between them is now known as Hurricane Pass. Over the last century, shifting sands have replenished what used to be a 9-foot-deep channel.

A dredging project two years ago deepened the pass, but after Idalia, Mathay said that channel has almost completely filled back in.

Mathay agrees the barrier islands protected north Pinellas from the worst of Idalia’s surge but said they did little to stop the flooding.

Ozona Fish Camp, the Dunedin marina where Mathay keeps his charter boat, saw floodwaters rise to 2 feet.

“A lot of people got flooded,” he said. “We still had a significant storm surge.”

Mathay noticed one silver lining from the storm: The fishing is the best he’s seen all year.

Red tide in February and abnormally hot water temperatures this summer stifled the fish bite locally, he said. But a cooling wave after Idalia has brought the fish out of hiding.

“It’s all cycles, man. You know, fishing goes in cycles,” Mathay said. “You have good years and bad years and good times and bad times.”

And change is just a part of life on the water.

“The whole islands are shifting,” he said. “They’ve changed year over year.”

Times staff writer Max Chesnes contributed to this report.

©2023 Tampa Bay Times. Visit tampabay.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Offices where people used to apply for loans now house alligators and lemurs. Tortoises roam freely and squawking lovebirds perch near the entrance.

Sonny Flynn, 58, is the owner and director of the Madeira Beach Alligator and Wildlife Discovery Center. On July 13, a fire swept through the building, killing about 150 animals. She said four of them were endangered species.

Now, about 40 of the more than 100 animals that survived the blaze — some of which Flynn said are critically endangered — are temporarily sheltered in an old bank building slated for demolition.

“This used to be a Bank of America,” she said. “Now it’s a bank of animals.”

Some of the survivors still bear scars.

There’s Walla, the frilled neck lizard, who suffered burns above its right shoulder. And Oogway, a tortoise recovering from a respiratory infection inflicted during the fire and whose shell was darkened by smoke from the blaze.

Oz, the only snake to survive the fire, didn’t eat for two months.

“We were really worried about him,” Flynn said.

She weighs the turtles and tortoises every week — losing weight is an early indicator of respiratory illness in reptiles.

Flynn said the fire ran between 1,500 and 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit — nearly hot enough to melt steel. The cause is still under investigation, authorities say.

“I’m really surprised anything survived,” she said.

Aside from the animals and a handful of wildlife center employees, the bank has been mostly empty since the center’s reopening. Only six families showed up Tuesday, the day after Flynn opened the temporary shelter to the public. She said she is used to greeting hundreds of visitors each day.

July is typically the center’s busiest month. But after missing out on revenue from ticket sales, Flynn said she has resorted to paying her eight staff members from her personal retirement fund.

“My whole life is gone right now,” she said. “I haven’t received a paycheck and I have rent. I have lemurs and a fox to take care of. They eat before I do.”

The building was insured and the owner will rebuild it with the insurance money, Flynn said, but the habitats and exhibits were not insured. She said she will need $150,000 to fully reconstruct the center’s facilities and she is counting on donations to do that.

Community support has been huge for the center, Flynn said. She has received donation checks, including one for $23,000. The center has raised another $15,000 through a GoFundMe campaign. There also have been fundraisers and non-monetary donations such as items for raffles, the tanks and enclosures housing the animals at the bank, food for the animals and $10,000 in computers from Odin Gaming of St. Petersburg.

In addition, Flynn said, the Michael and Robin Lally Forward Foundation said it would match up to $75,000 in community donations. She’s already received the first matched donation from the foundation for nearly $27,000.

Flynn said she hasn’t tallied up the total donations yet.

In addition to all of the donations, she said, the owners of the building volunteered to let her use it rent-free until January, when it will be demolished to build condominiums.

Sarasota Jungle Gardens and The Florida Aquarium are caring for most of the center’s alligators. Two of the warm-blooded reptiles are sheltered at the bank in an office with a window big enough for them to bask beside.

The rest of the surviving animals not sheltered at the bank are scattered across other nearby zoos, sanctuaries and aquariums.

She said she hopes to move back into the original building by Thanksgiving, though she expects renovations to continue far beyond the holidays.

Four of the original habitat units, only damaged by smoke, will be the first to open, she said.

Chandler Campbell, 25, has worked at the center for more than a year. She handles mammals, most of which — about 30 — were killed in the fire. Now, Campbell spends most days caring for the center’s two lemurs: Chewie and Wicket.

She’s frequently returned to the damaged building to help with cleanup since July.

“It’s nice to actually go in there and kind of be a part of the cleanup, as hard as it has been,” Campbell said. “It definitely was difficult to go back.”

Flynn said she and her staff have been operating out of the bank building for the last month. Floodwaters brought by Hurricane Idalia reached the bank’s front doors but didn’t get into the building. During the storm, she said she took 15 animals home with her.

“Thank God it’s a bank because they’re prepared for storms,” she said.

Flynn said she misses the education the center provided to visitors. Lengthy plaques describing the animals hung near exhibits. Now, only short, printed notes are available for people to read. She said she’s looking forward to hosting field trips, like previous excursions to nearby beaches, which provided hands-on learning experiences for students.

Flynn has had to cancel birthday parties and other outings to John’s Pass that the center would normally host.

The temporary location is now more than a mile away from the beach that had acted as an extension of the wildlife center.

Despite the bank’s limited space, Flynn still hasn’t said turned away any incoming rescues. She’s added about 20 new animals who have joined 40 survivors occupying the temporary center since the fire.

“If anybody knows me — my staff will tell you — if I have wall space then I have animal space,“ she said. “We’ll make do.”

The wildlife center is open daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at 14805 Gulf Blvd. in Madeira Beach.

Sea surface temperatures fell in the eastern Gulf in the wake of Idalia, and in the western north Atlantic after Hurricane Franklin.

Hurricanes cool oceans by “upwelling” cold water from below the sea surface. The suction effect of a storm’s low-pressure center thrusts cooler water up to the ocean’s surface, according to the NASA Earth Observatory.

Cold water from raindrops and cloud cover during a storm also contribute to this cooling effect.

Brain McNoldy, a senior research associate at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric and Earth Science, said abnormally hot sea surface temperatures this summer mean the Gulf is still very warm, despite the effects of Idalia’s cooling wake.

“That’s kind of crazy, actually, that the cold wake — at its peak — basically just erased the warm anomaly and brought it back to normal,” he said. “Now, it’s getting to be warmer than normal again.”

The lowest water temperatures after a storm occur within days of landfall. McNoldy said the Gulf was at its coolest around Sept. 6, when temperatures fell to 29 degrees Celsius.

“That coolest part of the week, it was still plenty warm to support any sort of hurricane that would have come across,” he said. “It’s just getting back to warmer than that again.”

Temperatures in portions of the Gulf affected by Idalia have already risen by about 1/2 degree Celsius in the time since the hurricane made landfall, according to sea surface temperature data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“Within another few days, you won’t even notice that there was a cool wake there,” McNoldy said.

Surface temperatures tend to heat back up about two weeks after a hurricane leaves the Gulf of Mexico because of its warm, deep water, he said. The Loop Current, which supplies warm water from the Caribbean to the Gulf, also plays a role in the returning marine heat.

Gulf temperatures are being watched closely by coral reef researchers, who say heat stress on reef systems this year exceeds anything they’ve seen in Florida’s history.

Liv Williamson, an assistant scientist at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science, said that because of these cooler, post-hurricane temperatures, Florida’s reefs are no longer accumulating heat stress, which causes coral bleaching and deaths.

But this could quickly change if temperatures rise again, which Williamson warned is likely this early in the year.
“We are not out of the woods yet,” she told the Times in an email. “But very relieved to see cooler temps for now at least.”

It’s not uncommon for hurricanes to cool surface temperatures temporarily before the warm waters return.

In 2005, hurricanes Katrina and Rita decreased water temperatures by more than 4 degrees Celsius in the wake of their paths, which cooled the entire Gulf of Mexico by roughly 1 degree Celsius, according to NASA data. But water temperatures quickly slid back up and remained high enough to fuel hurricanes through the middle of October.

Jeff Masters, a hurricane scientist formerly with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said the cooler period after Idalia and Franklin could weaken any additional storm systems in the Gulf for the remainder of the 2023 hurricane season.

“The first is the worst,” he said. “You’re probably not going to be able to get as an intense a hurricane as Idalia in the Gulf because it took advantage of the warm water that was there.”

Masters said this is already happening in the Atlantic Ocean — Hurricane Lee has weakened and will decrease more because of Franklin’s cooling wake.

But returning warm waters means this break won’t last long.

“By October, I think your Idalia advantage is going to be completely gone,” Masters said.

SB 540, dubbed the “sprawl bill” by opponents, mandates prevailing party attorney fees in challenges to local government comprehensive plan amendments. This means residents who take issue with their city’s or county’s plan change will have to foot the bill if they lose a legal battle to developers or local governments.

Environmental groups worry that rushed comprehensive plan amendments could hurt affordable housing, conservation and even hurricane evacuation routes in some communities.

A petition from 1000 Friends of Florida, a “smart-growth” nonprofit, garnered more than 5,700 signatures before DeSantis signed the bill into law last month. After DeSantis signed the measure into law, Friends of the Everglades called it “the worst environmental bill passed by the Florida Legislature during the 2023 session” and “a death knell for smart growth in Florida.”

Comprehensive plans act as a local constitution for environmentally and fiscally sustainable growth, said Jane West, policy and planning director for 1000 Friends of Florida.

“This bill did not get the attention that it warranted this legislative session because the culture wars were sucking the oxygen out of the room,” West said. “Under normal circumstances, we would have been able to rally the state behind this.”

West said comprehensive plan changes are usually initiated by a developer, which used to be allowed only twice each year.

“Now, it’s almost every single month at a local government county commission hearing,” West said.

In 2011, Gov. Rick Scott eliminated the Florida Department of Community Affairs, which took away the state’s power to block local comprehensive plan amendments. Now, the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity can only comment on or object to such changes.

Since 2020, the agency has used this limited power on just 6% of the nearly 2,000 proposed comprehensive plan amendments, according to records obtained by the Tampa Bay Times.

“A lot is slipping through the cracks,” West said.

West said local government officials like county commissioners often don’t have any city planning expertise.

“You’re leaving it to these folks who don’t have any training in planning, don’t have the training in understanding the fiscal implications of how expensive sprawl is,” she said.

West is worried that attorney fees could have a chilling effect on plan amendment pushback, effectively halting lawsuits brought by concerned residents.

“Do you really think they’re going to do that when they now have to not only pay for their own attorney but the local government’s attorney and developer’s attorney who frequently bills out at rates of $800 to $1,200 an hour?” West said.

State Sen. Nick DiCeglie, an Indian Rocks Beach Republican who sponsored the bill, said the law will “level the playing field” for developers going up against local governments with large tax bases who might stretch out the time of the lawsuit and rack up expensive attorney fees.

DiCeglie said lawsuits over plan amendments are often “frivolous” because citizens are given the chance to object to these changes during public comment before amendments are passed.

He said people need to be more involved in their local elections if they don’t like the plan amendments that are being passed.

“There’s always an election around the corner where they can make those changes and, ultimately, attempt to elect someone who is more aligned with those principles in their view of what their community looks like in the future,” he said.

DiCeglie said he has heard the outcry from the environmental community about this law, but that he doesn’t see any harmful consequences.

“If there are any issues with any legislation that we’ve passed, we’re always willing to come back and make sure that what we do is right,” DiCeglie said. “But I think that this is a solid piece of legislation and, you know, obviously the governor agrees with that.”

West said this law conflicts with DeSantis’ pledge to protect the Everglades by supporting sustainable growth.

“If you are making decisions that are dismantling the ability for the state and local governments to effectively regulate sprawl, then you are singlehandedly impairing water quality in the state,” she said.

“You can’t say, ‘Save the Everglades,’ throw a lot of money at it, and then allow a bill that will allow for development right up against the Everglades. That just doesn’t work.”

The barrier island of about 6,000 remains severed from the mainland after 150 mph winds drove a storm surge that collapsed Sanibel’s causeway bridge nearly two weeks ago. But more than 500 workers arrived on the island this weekend, reaching as far as the causeway’s third spoil island – more than two miles from the mainland.

Boats, planes and helicopters allowed some first responders, utility workers and residents access after city officials last week opened limited travel to the withered island – where plastic bags, powerlines, stray furniture and a layer of dried, gray muck remain strewn throughout the former wildlife sanctuary.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis promised last week to restore the bridge to Sanibel by the end of this month. The Florida Transportation Department completed similar repairs on Pine Island’s bridge last week, allowing nonprofits – including World Central Kitchen and Rapid Response Crisis Control – to set up relief efforts.

“I don’t agree with the governor on a lot of other things, but in this case he’s supporting this community and the residents of Florida by providing the help we need,” said Dana Souza, Sanibel’s city manager.

Residents flocked to the island just as the National Guard left Wednesday after providing initial assistance with security, a task now restored to local police and 10 Lee County deputies. More than 500 linemen set up a tent city outside The Sanibel School, where they will live.

“It’ll be a little Spartan,” Souza said Sunday, “but it will be sufficient for them to live on the island while they’re doing the work.”

Ozzie Fischer, a South Seas Island Resort fishing guide, ferried people by boat from the Captiva hotel.

“The first time they see it, they’re not mentally prepared, especially for the amount of damage,” he said. “They see it on TV, but I don’t think it really hits anybody until they visually see it.”

Fischer didn’t see himself as just a ferry operator; he was taking two to five people onto the island each day, and helped them clean out their waterlogged homes. It’s the right thing to do, he said.

Fischer was one of many charter boat owners permitted to charge a fee for services, but recreational owners were relying on donations to transport people through the debris-ridden waters.

“We have so many boats that are in the water leaking fuel. You have all these houses on septic and all this flooding,” he said. “You have a lot of chemicals, a lot of things going in these waters, and we’re not going to know the damage until maybe a year down the line.”

Digitized damage assessments from the county website, Souza cautioned, are not binding with FEMA, contractors or insurance companies; separate assessments need to be completed. Souza said even private roads should be cleared by early this week.

He assured contractors more hurricane passes will be issued soon and announced residents will not need permits to begin interior demolition. The city, he said, wants residents to be able to take swift action against the black mold spreading inside flooded buildings. Contractors’ concerns about port-a-potties remain a work in progress, Souza said.

As new regulations maintain the standing 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. curfew and allow people to stay on the island overnight, Souza reminded returning residents to stay hydrated. Five people needed medical attention due to dehydration or overheating this week, he said, and one needed to be evacuated by helicopter.

The island’s foliage and natural shade was killed by waves of saltwater – which have since settled in drainage ditches – swept in by the hurricane. With miles of rubble in every direction, one island convenience store offered free Gatorade, water and snacks to residents who made it back to check on the homes they were forced to abandon.

“The big thing that stops people is Gatorade,” said Hana St. Gean, one of ShackIt’s managers.

She and her husband shuttled into work across the causeway from their home in Fort Myers every day for years. This week, their commute required hitching a ride on a friend’s boat.

“Everybody who’s on-island right now helping had to come by boat and at personal expense,” St. Gean said, “because they’re so motivated to see their property.”

The hurricane blew the walls off Ellen Kenner’s waterfront condominium, taking her belongings with it.

“It’s instant Marie Kondo decluttering,” she said,

Kenner, a clinical psychologist, said joking about tragedy is a part of processing it. She said she doesn’t care about what was lost in the storm, but that she’s grateful to be alive.

“We love Sanibel,” said the island resident of seven years. “We still don’t want to move.”

Amid other concerns, Kenner remembered election season is approaching while sifting through what files did survive the surge. She is worried about how residents will be able to vote in the midterm elections.

“Where are the voting places?” Kenner asked. “They’re not on Sanibel anymore.”

Sanibel Mayor Holly Smith promised residents she would reach out to Tommy Doyle, Lee County’s supervisor of elections, to begin accommodating Sanibel’s more than 6,000 eligible voters, some of whom gather daily in the small, carpeted Fort Myers hotel conference room where city meetings were being held. Smith and some residents are living in the rooms above until their dilapidated, mold-ridden homes become inhabitable. Others drove to the meeting to listen to the day’s developments or ask questions.

Smith opened Sunday night’s city meeting as she has for the last 10 days – by reminding attendees how long it’s been since Hurricane Ian hit their island. Most don’t need the reminder. They call out or mumble “Day 11? in unison with Smith.

The audience of utility workers, long-time residents and business owners represented a fraction of the collaboration between public and private sectors, Smith said.

“It’s just a great example of what Sanibel is all about, and what differentiates us from other communities,” she said.

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This story was produced by Fresh Take Florida, a news service of the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications. The reporters can be reached at pratorj@ufl.edu and juliacoin@freshtakeflorida.com. You can donate to support our students here.