"The American Sea has been and will continue to be a gift to humankind. It brings beauty into our lives and invigorates the human spirit. It gives us food, moderates our climate, removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and puts oxygen into the same. There is a kind of nourishing energy out in the gulf that doesn't pump from a well."
Interestingly, it is, on average, only a mile deep. There are nearly 200 estuaries ringing its shores. The mild temperatures assured that the shoreline in Florida was rich in wildlife, a perennial store of food for the indigenous peoples. "The Indians were tall in stature because they were rich in food." The natives lived in total harmony with nature. "The European conquest introduced a future of imprudent relationships with nature." It is believed that over 350,000 aboriginals populated the Gulf coast. The unwelcome Spanish incursions of the 16th century "planted genocidal time bombs that helped clear the way for future colonization." The Spanish were replaced by the French, then the English, and the Americans. The indigenous population was no more.
The purchase of Louisiana in 1803 and Florida in 1819 ceded most of the Gulf coast to the US. The admission of Texas a few decades later finished the process. Mapping the ever-changing coastline of inlets, bays, marshes and deltas was a job that occupied the government for most of the century. Fishing became the Gulf's primary occupation and Pensacola was its capital. Fishing off Florida's coast was so popular that it ignited a tourism boom. Of all the Gulf fish, it was the tarpon that attracted Americans as well known as Grover Cleveland, TR, Edison, Ford and Ted Williams. It was six feet long and often over 100 pounds. Hemingway and Zane Grey wrote about it and railroads were built to transport people south to catch it.
However, it was not the attractions around nor the fish within, but the fuel below the Gulf that brought it to its pivotal role in the American economy. The 1901 the Spindletop gusher that ushered in the petroleum era in America occurred just a couple of dozen miles from the Gulf. Soon thereafter, the first ever water rigs appeared. Just after WW2, the first over-the-horizon rig drilled off the Louisiana coast.
The Florida coast has been protected by mangrove trees living comfortably between sea and fresh water for eons. The post-war era saw a vast immigration to the coast, one that cleared away the mangroves and replaced them with canals, breakwaters and cement seawalls. The sunbelt was attracting people and the onslaught of the Gulf's natural ways was underway. Pollution, meaningful and massive, followed the population increases and most importantly, the industrialization of the estuaries. Throughout the Gulf, and in particular at the mouth of the Mississippi, the waste, nitrates and pollution of two-thirds of the nation flowed into, and poisoned the Gulf of Mexico. A vast dead zone the size of New Jersey was discovered as early as the eighties. Throughout the region, pushback by private entities and pieces of local, state and federal governments are trying to turn the environmental depredation tide. "Fortunately, every estuarine bay and river has at least one organized group defending its ecological integrity. Multiple concerns are doing the same for the larger gulf."
This book is very well-done, and at 531 pages, pretty long. I can clearly state that if you want to know everything possible about the Gulf, this book is for you.
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