Great Day on Rookery Bay

 Thursday, March 3, 2022

Hi Blog!

Today was our first full day in the Naples/Marco Island KOA. We had visited this area back in 2013, but we didn't have our own kayaks back then and had to rent them. Now that we have our own kayaks, we are free to explore on our own schedule. High on our list was Rookery Bay.

The Rookery Bay Reserve encompasses 110,000 acres of coastal lands and waters, providing habitat for a wide variety of plants and animals. From barrier island beaches and mangrove forest to freshwater marshes and pine flatwoods, these habitats enable animals big and small to fill a niche on land, in the air or underwater.

Our original idea was to bring the GPS and just paddle around, get ourselves lost and then follow our track back. However, when we arrived at the boat launch, we noticed that a paddling trail had been designated by the volunteers for Rookery Bay Environmental Center. We forgot to snap a photo before we started out, so this picture was actually taken at the end of our adventure (pay no attention to the man behind the camera).

We thought about kayaking right from our campground on the Richardson River, but that would have added several miles of paddling before reaching Rookery Bay. We found a launch site just five miles away, so strapped the kayaks to the Jeep and hopped them over to Shell Point.

Shell Island Road is a popular kayak launch site. Many of the commercial outfitters have their clients meet there. We were lucky enough to get launched before the crowds came. There was just one other couple that came in after us.

As soon as we left our little protected inlet, we were greeted with a little wind in the open bay.

A snowy egret was patrolling the shore looking for an early lunch.

Shell Island is literally an island made of shells. The early settlers used these shell mounds to build their fishing shacks. People primarily made a living off the richness of the estuary, catching fish, harvesting shellfish, and also growing small plots of winter vegetables.

Below, Kathy paddles through two small shell islands.

These little islands are perfect for the wading birds like the egret and ibis. They just stand in the shallows and wait for lunch to swim by.

The canoe/kayak trail was well marked. As soon as we reached one numbered pole, we could see the next pole in the distance.

As we came around a small island, we found this little blue heron focused on his fishing. He didn't even look up as we passed by.

As we worked our way around the various islands, we could hear people talking. It wasn't long before we encountered a tourist group being led by a tour guide. Lucky for us, they were going in the opposite direction to our route. We soon left them behind.

By the time we hit marker number 5, we felt like we had the bay to ourselves. As we reached No. 10, the trail took us through a channel to an island with very low hanging mangroves.

As we came back out in the open, an osprey stopped and hovered over us for a while. He or she didn't see anything worth diving for.

However, the pelican was curious to see what the osprey was up to, so he cruised by and gave the area a good look, but Mr. Pelican also came up empty.

Finding the trail markers was fun. We actually found all 18. We thought about how we could put all 18 photos in the blog, but then there would be no room for other pictures. So, we just sprinkled in a few numbered post shots like this one.

After reaching post 15, we realized we had a good bit of open water paddling ahead of us. We decided to beach the kayaks on a shell island and enjoy our lunch.

It is unclear to us how the shell islands formed.  Where our kayaks were beached for lunch, we could see that the majority of shells were open mussel shells.  We couldn't tell whether the open shells had been left by mussels that died naturally, or whether locals had harvested the mussels and disposed of the shells here.  In any event, the empty shells have agglomerated with sand and silt to create concrete-like or coral-like underwater reefs and islands.

After lunch, we eventually found posts 16 and 17, but not before taking a small detour around a couple islands.

Just as we entered the channel for Shell Island, a little osprey poked its head up from behind the sign. The parents did a great job building a nest between the two metal signs.

While the channel was listed as a manatee zone, we didn't see any manatees today. Number 18 was our last post. 

The paddle was only three miles long, but we had our share of challenges with the wind in the open water and rising tide current around some of the islands. All-in-all it was a great outing.

After our paddle, we took a short walk out the Monument Trail.

In the 1960’s, with farms, buildings, roads and canals springing up across coastal Collier County, residents started to take notice that the once pristine bays and estuaries were showing the effects of development upstream. A 10-mile loop road through Rookery Bay proposed in 1963 would have opened up unbounded opportunities for coastal development, but a new perspective emerged in the community.

The Collier County Conservancy, the National Audubon Society, and the Nature Conservancy galvanized community support that resulted in more than $600,000 being raised to buy 3,362 acres of land that would have been otherwise destroyed. This land ultimately became the Rookery Bay Sanctuary, prompting the birth of a legacy.

In 1971, four thousand Greater Naples School children ran a penny-drive in a communal effort to stop a road-construction plan. Monument Trail gets its name from The Children’s Column erected at Shell Point in 1971.  A time capsule was placed inside it with the names of the children that helped protect this natural environment.  However, the capsule was vandalized and contents stolen before the capsule could be officially opened in 2000, as the plaque states was originally intended. However, the monument to their efforts still stands.

On our way back to camp, we stopped at the Rookery Bay National Estuarine Research Center. The Center manages the Reserve which stretches across 110,000 acres of pristine mangrove forest, uplands and protected waters, encompassing 40% of Collier County coastline. The Reserve is committed to preservation through research, education, and land protection. We watched a couple videos, one on the Center's environmental and outreach work and the other on the history of the Reserve itself. Both were very well done. We also had the opportunity to chat with one of the volunteers who is an avid paddler. He gave us lots of great ideas for other launch sites, which we'll take advantage of and report to you in upcoming blog entries.  Here is a view of the Environmental Research Center:

We hope to do a few more paddles if the weather holds out. Stay tuned.