The fish swimming in our Everglades are poisoned with toxic mercury. The only way to fix this is to regulate runoff from the Everglades Agricultural Area.

According to a Miami Herald report, “Bottlenose dolphins swimming off the Florida Everglades, beloved for zipping alongside lonely boaters in the remote bays and rivers chiseled out of the vast marshes, have the highest levels of mercury ever documented in the mammals, researchers have found.” The highest levels of mercury ever documented in mammals. The recent news fails to point at the one source of mercury we know to exist, also in the highest recordings in the world: Everglades canals supplied by run-off water from sugar fields in the Everglades Agricultural Area. Each year, hundreds of thousands of pounds of sulfur is added by Big Sugar to depleted soils in order to promote higher crop yields. The sulfur promotes bioaccumulation and the formation of the deadly, toxic form of mercury in the Everglades. Why hasn’t the state set limits on sulfur used by Big Sugar? Why won’t the state invest in science to find out if the Everglades Agricultural Area is contributing to the massive recordings of mercury in dolphin and other mammals that use the Everglades?

Additional Information:

• Scientists and environmentalists have been sounding the alarm about methylmercury in the Everglades and its threats to humans and wildlife for years. The following column from Florida Sportsman Magazine was written in by Karl Wickstrom in 2011: http://www.floridasportsman.com/2011/07/01/florida-sportsman-consrevation-openers/
• UNSEEN ENEMY: “It’s invisible, but the mercury assault on the Everglades is beginning to have visible effects on wildlife and human beings.” Read the latest from Florida Weekly: https://naples.floridaweekly.com/articles/unseen-enemy/