163 



BiscAYNE Bay as a Natural Resource 



(An address before the Zoological Society of Florida, October G, 1969, by Dr. 

 Harris B. Stewart, Jr., Director of ESSA's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteor- 

 ological Laboratories, Miami, Fla.) 



Biscayne Bay is a beautiful, busy, bountiful, and booming bay. It extends some 

 forty miles along tbe southeast Florida coast from Dumfounding Bay aiid the 

 Interama site on the north to Card Sound and Arsenicker Keys on the south. 

 On the west it i* bounded by expensive homes, a busy port, the heart of a major 

 city, more homes, public beaches, and a long stretch of red and black mangroves. 

 On the east, Biscayne Bay is bounded by the wall-to-wall hotels and condominiums 

 of Miami Beach, by Virginia Key and Key Biscayne, and by the string of beauti- 

 ful keys from Soldier Key on the north through Ragged Keys, Sand Key, and 

 Elliott Key, to Totten and Old Rhodes Keys at the south end of Biscayne Bay. 

 I have come to know the bay intimately only during the past two years, hut I have 

 come to love it. Because I love it, I am terribly concerned for its future ; for its 

 future is our future, is Dade County's future, I predict in all confidence that if 

 we, the people, allow the overall use of our bay to continue to develop unplanned 

 as it has for the past forty years, our children and grandchildren will be living 

 with an unattractive, azoic, concrete bounded, open cesspool. This is not an ex- 

 aggeration. Boston Harbor two hundreds years ago was one of the truly beauti- 

 ful estuaries in America, and the early accounts of New York harbor and the 

 Hudson River estuary are beautiful to read. But look at these harbors today ! And 

 look at Baltimore Harbor, look at the Potomac River at Washington, look at 

 Norfolk and Charleston harbors. You have seen them, you know what I am talk- 

 ing about without my having to go into details of open sewers, oily waters, no 

 swimming, no fishing, unsafe boating, and waterfront areas of rotted piers and 

 slums. We have not reached this stage yet, but only because we are younger. Give 

 us time and the same disinterest, and we will be just like all the others. It is a 

 slow and inexorable process nurtured by the selfish interest of short-sighted man 

 himself. If the process continues unchecked here, the end result will be the same. 

 It is only through the actions of man that the process continues, so it must be 

 througli the actions of man — albeit more enlightened man— that the process can 

 be checked. 



Before going any farther, I would like to set some groundrules establish what 

 the physicists call the boundary conditions. First, although I am a federal civil 

 servant, I left my ES'SA hat out in the lobby and am speaking tonight only as a 

 concerned Dade County oceanographer and a member of our Zoological Society 

 of Florida. Secondly, I would like to establish in your minds my own personal 

 position on "conservation", for the militant conservationist — even the quiet con- 

 servationist — plays a major role in what I call the Biscayne Bay syndrome. Of 

 all the endangered species, I consider Homo sapiens as the most important. 

 Wildlife refuges should be estaiblished and maintained inviolate — not for the 

 animals themselves, but so that man can enjoy them, so that man can know that 

 they still exist in their natural habitat and derive pleasure therefrom. Mine is 

 a man-oriented view of conservation. When it comes to Biscayne Bay, I consider 

 conservation of the natural environment as one of many uses to which the bay 

 will be put, one of the many conflicting and multiple uses of the bay. It is not 

 the ne plus ultra that many would consider it, but rather it is one more of the 

 many uses, and it must be carefully balanced with the other demands when value 

 judgments on the utilization of this resource are being considered. "Conserva- 

 tion", like "motherhood", has to many become an inviolate concept. I can think 

 of nothing worse for the world than unrestricted motherhood. Overpopulation is 

 probably the greatest problem facing mankind today. Conservation should be 

 put in the same category. It should be looked at objectively, dispassionately, and 

 stripped of the unenlightened blind emotionalism with which it is too often as- 

 sociated. A third boundary condition is my own personal bias — prejudice, if you 

 will. I happen to love Biscayne Bay and want to see its use go for the greatest 

 possible good for the greatest number of people. 



Tonight I would like to outline briefly the problems that if unsolved will 

 eventually result in the destruction of Biscayne Bay as probably our greatest 

 natural resource in Dade County. I will also offer what I consider the best present 

 solution to this problem. It is a major problem and will take a major solution. 

 It is a problem created by the actions of people, and it will take the action of 

 people to solve it. 



