Indian River Lagoon: What went wrong?

Published: Sunday, May 11, 2014 at 9:31 a.m. Last Modified: Sunday, May 11, 2014 at 9:32 a.m.

And what snuffed out 135 manatees, 300 pelicans, 76 dolphins and a half-billion dollars worth of seagrass?

If William of Ockham were trying to answer that, he might have started with the extreme cold, dry weather of 2010 and 2011. His 14th century philosophical precept, Occams Razor, holds that the simplest among competing theories is usually the best starting point. First, flesh out theories requiring the fewest assumptions, before moving on to more complex, refined explanations.

That hasnt stopped an army of armchair ecologists. Theyre filling a void left by biologists confounded by the complex unraveling of the lagoon ecosystem, which began swirling in a death spiral in 2011. Few answers have surfaced as to what catalyzed so many casualties, including a combine

73 square miles of seagrass, the estuarys primary nursery for life.

So semi-baked theories abound.

They range from the mundane cold snaps to the strange Doppler radars slowly baking the biology with microwave radiation. That ones new. A theory blaming manatee overpopulation has been around for years.

Biologists working the problem agree on the 2011 superbloom as the seminal event. It nearly wiped out the lagoons seagrass.

Just two years earlier, seagrass was thriving at levels not seen since the 1940s. Restoration efforts finally seemed to be paying off and the recent drought meant less polluting runoff into the waterway.

Then in early spring of 2011, a green monster superbloom of phytoplankton cast a dark cloud over that success. It eventually stretched from southern Mosquito Lagoon to just north of Fort Pierce Inlet, blocking sunlight from seagrass and leaving death in its path.

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Indian River Lagoon: What went wrong?