Anna Maria Island Turtle Watch and Shorebird Monitoring is monitoring the Piney Point environmental crisis.
AMITW is watching for how polluted, nutrient-rich water from a reservoir at the defunct Piney Point plant site is moving through Tampa Bay, said executive director Suzi Fox.
AMITW is a nonprofit focused on collecting data on sea turtles, listed as threatened and endangered in Florida, depending on the species.
The nonprofit also is keeping in contact with Manatee County and state officials, including at the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.
“The FWC is working closely with our partners regarding the Piney Point discharge response in Manatee County. The FDEP is the lead agency in response to this issue,” Amanda Nalley of the FWC’s Marine Fisheries Management division wrote April 7 in an email.
“FWC officers are patrolling Port Manatee and monitoring for any effects from the discharge. FWC biologists are also monitoring the area,” Nalley added.
“There are a lot of issues here we have to watch and I think the county is in tune with this at this moment,” Fox told The Islander April 6 by phone.
“If anything starts to flow south here, we need to know about it,” she added.
The controlled release of contaminated water from the Piney Point site began March 30 after a leak was discovered days earlier.
On April 2, one of the reservoir containment walls began to collapse, creating the potential for a wall of water to flow out. The following day Gov. Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency and, to prevent a large-scale breach, more contaminated water was released into Tampa Bay.
AMITW now will look for sick, injured or dead sea turtles onshore or near-shore lacking obvious signs of trauma.
In such cases, AMITW would call the state for necropsies.
“Collecting the data from any turtle that looks ill in any way is going to be the best thing we can do,” Fox said.
Scientists from the FWC and its Florida Marine Research Institute would examine any dead turtles.
“If there is any way to help them, (the turtles) they will come up with it,” said Fox.
“We still need some more water quality data to figure out what we’re actually looking at and we’re still gathering that information,” FWC media contact Kelly Richmond said by phone.
“I can tell you that the pH is low, which is generally a positive thing,” Richmond said.
This is not the first time Piney Point has posed an environmental threat.
But, Fox said, “I didn’t think we’d get here.”