Director’s Note: Update on Little Sarasota Bay

July 16, 2024 – By Sarasota Bay Estuary Program director Dave Tomasko

Last week, we gave you an update on Palma Sola Bay, discussing its trends in seagrass, how much macroalgae we found, etc. Today, let’s talk about Little Sarasota Bay (LSB). There are a lot of strong opinions on the health of our bay, which is especially true for LSB. Our multi-parameter Ecosystem Health Report Card for Little Sarasota Bay, as of 2023, is shown here.

As you’ll recall, lower scores (warmer colors) represent more degraded conditions, while higher scores (cooler colors) represent healthier conditions. This graph indicates that LSB was a fairly healthy system between about 2006 to 2012, with average scores above 2.5. However, there was an overall downward trend during those same years. Values continued to degrade between 2013 to about 2018. The years of 2018 and 2019 were the worst we’ve recorded here. Although values had increased slightly between 2018 and 2019, the biggest increase was between 2019 and 2020, providing some initial evidence of a positive trend. Two of the last three years (2021 and 2023) had scores above 2.5, and none of the past four years had values at or below 1.5.