1967 0 
Price, W. A. (1967) Development of the basin - basin honeycomb of Florida Bay and the 
northern Cuban Lagoon. Trans. Gulf Coast Assoc. Geol. Soc. . 17:368-99. 
[NO COPY OF PAPER AVAILABLE. ABSTRACT FROM SCHMIDT (1991).] A 
geomorphological synthesis of geological and ecological data on Florida Bay is provided 
by the author as follows: Florida Bay, a triangular 1,000-sq mile, bimodally windy, 
sub-tropical lagoon is a honey comb of closely spaced, interconnecting, sub-oval, pan¬ 
shaped basins individually upwards of 10 miles long and 12 ft deep. It lies north-south 
between mangrove swamp belts along the mainland of of the Everglades Ntional Park 
and the emergent barrier reef of the Florida Keys. Basin walls of Holocene marl made 
stable by alterations of mangrove swamp bands and marine grasses form a honeycomb 
pattern trough the lagoon. Basin areas and depths increase irregularly southward. No 
process of accumulation adequate by itself to form such honeycombs is known. The 
genetic process was the drowning and embayment of oriented lakes formed in drowned 
marsh rills. 
1967 0 
Scholl, D. W., and F. C. Craighead (1967) Recent geological history of the west coast of 
Florida; coastal mangrove swamps, and Florida Bay. Trans.. Gulf Coast Assoc. Geol. Soc. . 
17:481. 
[ABSTRACT ONLY. DATE OF SAMPLING UNKNOWN OR NOT APPLICABLE.] The Recent 
(last 10,000 — 11,000 yrs ) geologic history of the northeastern corner of the Gulf of 
Mexico, i.e., western and southern continental shelves of peninsular Florida, is 
recorded by the character and stratigraphy of outer-shelf and nearshore deposits. 
These deposits chiefly reflect the interplay of a generally rising sea level and the 
proximity of sources of terrigenous detritus, especially detrital quartz. For example, 
seaward of west-central Florida the outer shelf is essentially a bedrock surface 
overlain by a thin veneer of bioclastic sediment and biogenic reef growths that initially 
formed in a shallow nearshore environment. In contrast, the inner part of the shelf is 
flooded with shelly quartz sand or silt. Some of this detrital debris has been 
transferred to the shore to form prisms of quartzose beach sand, tracks of prograding 
beach ridges, and high coastal dunes. The quartz is chiefly derived from reworking of 
residual shelf and terrace deposits and drowned coastal plain sediments of Pleistocene 
age. Sources of detrital quartz disappear to the south, consequently the inner belt of 
quartzose deposits narrows and becomes increasingly mixed with shell debris and finer 
calcilutaceous components in this direction. As an important constituent of shelf 
sediments, detrital quartz essentially vanishes by the latitude of Cape Sable. Attesting 
to this, the carbonate content of unconsolidated sediment in Florida Bay (immediately 
south of the Cape) averages close to 90%. This sediment is primarily composed of 
comminuted molluscan, foraminiferal, and algal debris, 80-85% of which consists of 
"metastable" aragonite and high-magnesian calcite. The calcarenitic and calcilutaceous 
deposits of Florida Bay are as much as 4 m thick and overlie a thin stratum of 
freshwater peaty and calcareous sediment resting on a karsed bedrock surface of 
Pleistocene age. The basal freshwater deposits have a radiocarbon age of 
approximately 4000 yrs, which implies that sea level at this time was about 4 m lower 
than its present position. Also beginning about 4000 yrs ago marine water slowly 
inundated the western margin of the freshwater swamps of the Everglades, thereby 
providing the necessary paralic environment for the growth of the magnificent coastal 
mangrove forest and swamps of southwestern Florida. Strata underlying submerged 
waterways, intra-forest bays and tidal channels of the swamps form a simple 
transgressive sequence consisting of a basal freshwater unit of peat and calcite mud, a 
middle unit of paralic and brackish-water peat, and an upper marine unit of organic-rich 
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