Suwannee River Estuary:
The End of Water’s Journey

By Peter Lane Taylor
Reporting From Lower Suwannee River Basin

Along the lower Suwannee River, 50 miles southwest of the sinkholes that feed headsprings like the Ichetucknee, the landscape looks nothing like the Florida people see in postcards. Instead of palm-fringed beaches, life here is defined by swamp forests, wetlands, and the clean freshwater of the 197 springs that flow into the Suwannee along its 245 miles journey to the Gulf of Mexico.

On the last day of our expedition we've joined Russel Frydenborg, a biologist with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, and Rob Mattson, biologist for the Suwannee River Water Management District, to follow the journey of water through the Floridan aquifer to the end of the road and learn about the downstream influence of springs on the estuary. It's a journey that will take us 30 miles by motorboat down the final stretch of the Suwannee River from Fanning Springs State Park, along mixed tupelo-cypress swamps, through the saw grass flats of the Lower Suwannee National Wildlife Refuge and out to the fertile shellfish beds off Gulf coast communities like Suwannee and Cedar Key. Here, at the end of water's journey, the integral relationship between clean spring water, downstream habitats, and the human communities they sustain couldn't be more obvious. Just a short distance from Cedar Key, an ancient five-acre shell mound left by Florida's first humans bares witness to the fact that the health of the estuarine ecosystem was as important to humans 3500 years ago as it is today.

“Though there’s not a spring in sight,
everything around us—the oyster reefs,
the fish, the grasses,
and the people of Suwannee—
are dependent upon abundant, clean
water flowing from Florida’s springs. ”

Russ and Rob are the ultimate guides to help us understand the relationship between springs and the river. Their encyclopedic knowledge of the plants and animals of the spring-river ecosystem and their passion to share that wisdom with others has been instrumental in helping local communities to understand that threats to the quality and quantity of the water in the aquifer doesn't just affect the health of the springs. It also impacts sensitive, downstream coastal habitats and the livelihoods of locals like marina owner George Anderson and clammer Sue Colson who rely on a steady delivery of clean freshwater from the river to keep offshore oyster, clam, and sport fisheries healthy.

"The Suwannee is an inextricably bound system," Russel explains as we journey downriver. "If you don't keep the forests and adjacent habitats upstream intact, you won't have clean water feeding into the river from the springs, and if you don't have clean water, the whole system will cease to function properly."

What's at stake here isn't just another river. The Suwannee River Basin is one of the wildest and most undeveloped river systems in the country, supporting a unique mix of sub-tropical forests, wetlands, and tidal rivers, as well as providing a last refuge for rare animals like the threatened Gulf Sturgeon and the endangered West Indian Manatee. Further downstream at the mouth of the river, where people like Sue and her husband Russell, a fifth generation Floridian, pull clams by hand from the rich sediments off Cedar Key, the Suwannee also supports one of the last vestiges of Florida.

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