CichlidFish.com - Fish That Think.

Just returned from a Thanksgiving trip to visit family in Tampa.  Glad to see everyone doing a great job, as always!  Couple of items of interest from the trip.

First, I stopped off in Ocala and visited Silver Springs for the first time since about the mid-50's.  It's of course been swallowed up by the Ocala "suburbs".  Used to be pretty much in the boonies, but not much boonies left in Fla these days.  Much has changed, but the core of it is still the glass-botom boat ride over the spreings -- cenotes -- that create the beginning of the Silver River.  There used to be a swimming beach next to where the boats moored, but that's gone now.  Used to be a real lesson in temperature differentials.  The water coming out of the Florida aquifer is a constant 72 degrees F.  If you dive into that on a 98 degree day, it's a real eye-opener!  Conversely though, if the air temp is in the 40's or 50's, it feels really nice!  Too bad, but I suppose the liability costs got out of hand.  Plus the swimmers weren't spending money...

The biggest shock to me was the fish -- or lack of them.  Back in the day, there was one of the deep springs that the tour guides called "Catfosh Castle".  There must have been hundreds, or even thousands of BIG catfish in there, going all the way down to 60 or 80 feet deep.  Amazing sight!  Now, however, that spring has a new "tour" name, and the catfish are just not there!  The only fish we saw were some sunfish (mostly bluegills), a bunch of nice-sized gars, and a few big plecos.  The bullheads or blues or whatever species used to be there totally gone!  After the tour I spoke briefly with the tour guide, who dropped his 50's huckster act long enough to opine that the population density of the area (now at about 330,000, as opposed to about 18,000 when he moved there in the late 60's, has created a huge water quality problem -- even with the massive quantities of water coming up out of the springs.  The nitrogen running into the water system form the fertilization of lawns and golf courses, as well as the sewage treatment and other industrial runoff, together with the damage to the aquifer during the construction of the aborted Barge Canal project, has resulted in more algae in the water, together with who knows what else, and many species just weren't able to hack it.  A real stunner!

Another small adventure was an impromptu visit to a place called Big Cat Rescue.  It's in north Tampa -- the new Carrollwood area, right by Citrus Mall.  They have a collection of rescued cats, ranging from Bobcats to Cougars to Tigers and Lions, to name just a few species.  Some of these are circus retirees, but others are former pets whose owners realized a little late that a 500 pound kitty is not exactly the same level of commitment as a 15-pound Siamese.  Others are from bizarre breeding programs (white tigers), or refugees from "canned hunt" operationss.  These folks give you a good tour, and they're doing good work.  If you're going to be in Tampa, I recommed it.  Their Web site is: http://www.bigcatrescue.org/index.htm

While our hobby is not really philosophically based on environmentalism, most of us who have been in it for awhile can't help but be concerned by what we see happening to the native homes of our pets.  Many of our favorite fish no longer even exist in the wild, and that situation is only going to get worse in the short term.  The situation is even more dire for the big mammals.  Hopefully we can work out a way for all of us to continue to exist.

The biggest shock to me was the fish -- or lack of them

Bummer

Suprised it wasn't full of non-natives like most of the rest of Florida's warm waters

Like I said, a few plecos.  Silver Springs was where a lot of movies were filmed, dating back to 1916.  Creature from the Black Lagoon was one, and more than one Tarzan movie was shot there. One of them, starring Johnnie Weissmuller, employed a bunch of Rhesus monkeys.  The film crew left, but many of the monkeys stayed, and became an attraction at Silver Springs on one of the islands there, called The Monkey Jungle.  That doesn't seem to be in operation any more, but the monkeys formed a rather large colony there in central Florida, and many anthropology students have studied their social organization down thru the years.  Don't know exactly where they live these days, but they're probably still around somewhere.

called The Monkey Jungle.  That doesn't seem to be in operation any more

My understanding was they got shut down for breeding Piranhas and turning them loose 

Hah!  Monkeying indeed!