“This is just the latest symbol of a much larger Florida story.”

Last month, in Florida’s Manatee County along the state’s western Gulf Coast, the Seattle-based marine terminal services company SSA Marine Inc. announced that it intended to partner with a Tampa, Florida-based holding company, Slip Knott LLC, to build an enormous new cruise port adjacent to the county’s Sunshine Skyway Bridge. The patch of land in question is lushly festooned with seagrass coverage and mangroves, and is home to oysters, clams, reddish, pelicans and other fauna. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the plan has met with fierce local opposition, the latest chapter in the long struggle between those who seek to protect Flrodia’s complex ecosystem and those who see it as a vehicle for economic benefit and personal enrichment. To get a better grasp on what is being proposed and what’s at stake, Notes from the World spoke to Max Chesnes, the Environment Reporter for the Tampa Bay Times; Maya Burke, the Assistant Director of the Tampa Bay Estuary Program, an intergovernmental partnership of Hillsborough, Manatee, Pasco and Pinellas counties and a number of other state and federal entities that seeks to build partnerships to restore and protect Tampa Bay; and Abbey Tyrna, the Executive Director of Suncoast Waterkeeper, an organization focused on protecting and restoring the waters on Florida’s Suncoast. [Image: Terra Ceia Preserve in Manatee County, Florida with the city of Tampa in the background. Photo via Southwest Florida Water Management District.]