Indian River Lagoon

The Indian River Lagoon runs about 156 miles down Florida's east coast from Ponce Inlet to Jupiter Inlet, a shallow estuary held behind barrier islands, and it is described as one of the most biologically diverse estuaries in North America. It lies across the boundary between temperate and subtropical climates, so northern and tropical species overlap in its waters. More than 4,000 species of plants and animals have been recorded in it, Nearly a third of the nation's manatees use it, and about a thousand bottlenose dolphins live in it year-round. At Titusville the lagoon separates the mainland from Merritt Island and the Kennedy Space Center. When NASA bought the land for its launch complex in the early 1960s, it set aside the unused buffer as the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, so the lagoon shore opposite Titusville became protected habitat largely by accident. The lagoon is also a warning. In 2011 an algae superbloom darkened the water and killed tens of thousands of acres of seagrass, the food manatees depend on. Nutrients from septic tanks, fertilizer and runoff fed repeated blooms after it, and in 2021 more than a thousand manatees died in Florida, many of them starved after the lagoon's seagrass died. State and federal wildlife agencies began feeding lettuce to manatees at a power plant near Cape Canaveral as an emergency measure. Seagrass restoration and septic-to-sewer conversions along the shore have been under way since.