Just after dawn breaks in Northwest Florida, Choctawhatchee Basin Alliance (CBA) staff and AmeriCorps team members are up to their knees in the calm waters of the bay. Working in pairs, they use long seine nets to scoop up aquatic critters, carefully transferring them to a cooler for transport to elementary schools in Okaloosa and…
Author: Erika Zambello
Erika Zambello is a writer, birder, and photographer living and working along the Emerald Coast of Florida. She has a master’s degree in environmental management, where she specialized in ecosystem science and conservation. Her love of the outdoors was inspired by a childhood in Maine, where she returned for her National Geographic Young Explorer grant. In addition to Maine, she has lived in New York, France, Washington, DC, and North Carolina. Erika believes in the power of communicating conservation and exploration, which was the inspiration for One World, Two Feet.
Hook and Trigger – Keeping an Eye on Algae
Bruce and Susan had already unloaded their aluminum jon boat into Fuller Lake when I arrived on a windy afternoon with a kayak. Located within the Coffeen Nature Preserve and bordered by tall pines and titi trees, Fuller is a coastal dune lake that in turn drains into Morris Lake before intermittently outfalling into the…
Choctawhatchee Basin Alliance – CBA and Eglin AFB Complete New Reef
Only July 26th, 2018, CBA staff and AmeriCorps Northwest Florida Environmental Stewards completed a 750 linear foot reef within Eglin AFB’s Alaqua Bayou. Reef breakwaters reduce shoreline erosion, provide habitat for wildlife, and create critical structure for native oysters. The reef is one of three major living shoreline initiatives built on Eglin in 2017 and…
E. Zambello Writing and Art 