Mote Marine, Sarasota County team up to restore Venice creek

VENICE, Fla. - Wading through Alligator Creek, Ryan Schloesser and his team use a seine net to see what fish are in the water.

"1 little, 2 little, 3 little mosquito fish," he said.

While good for eating mosquitoes, the diversity and lack of fish in the Venice Creek, is a bad sign.

"That's partly because this is a low-oxygen system. Fish need that oxygen to survive and without that high-quality water you don’t have a lot of productive fish," said Schloesser, program manager of the Fisheries Ecology and Enhancement Program at Mote Marine Laboratory.

He's working with Sarasota County to get a baseline on the creek's health to help restore it.

"It's impaired for biology, it’s impaired for water quality and we are trying to give it back its natural function. It’s really lacking that right now," said Amanda Boone, Sarasota County's Storm Water Senior Manager.

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The mile-and-a-half creek eventually leads to the bay. Any low water quality will end up there.

"If we have low water quality in the bay the best thing we can do is feed it more healthy, productive waters and that all comes from our tidal creek systems," said Schloesser.

However, construction such as adding more bends, curves and reducing erosion in the area is necessary to restore the creek to better health.

"We are looking to do is to find that balance, we’ve focused too much on move the water. Now we need to look at improve the water," Boone explained.

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Seeing finding two juvenile fish, a red drum and a snook, was a positive sign on Friday. Tags were placed on both to monitor their movements and begin a program that will increase their populations.

"Our goal with this restoration is to clean up the water, produce productive fish habitat so we can feed the bay the food that it needs," said Schloesser.