Honeymoon Island

Madison and I ended up visiting Honeymoon Island 3 times. We talked to a park ranger who said that all plants here are drought tolerant. The animals here have to withstand drought as well. There is no fresh water on the island. Honeymoon does prescribed burns that used to be called controlled burns. The reason they do this is to reduce catastrophic fires, to help restore the ecosystem, kill non native species, and help plants who need fire to reproduce. They burn different zones at a time to try and mimic the natural cycle of fire in the ecosystem. This can be anywhere from 3 to 5 years depending on the plant. They factor in wind conditions, dryness, and KBDI, which is a drought index determining the amount of rain and the absorption of rain. One of the many ecosystems here is the beach dune ecosystem. Honeymoon is a barrier island that takes the bulk of storms and helps protect against erosion. A clear example was on our first trip here during that big hurricane on the east coast. The line of mangroves by the water helped protect us from the majority of the wind. Once we stepped past a break in the mangroves all the wind was back at us. Beach dune ecosystems also help stop flooding from occurring inland. The island also provides people a relaxing and peaceful destination. Honeymoon used to be one island called hog island because they had hogs. In 1921 a hurricane broke the island apart into two. That created what is now Caladesi and Honeymoon Island. The spot the hurricane ripped through to separate the islands is called hurricane pass that is about 300 yards long. Some of the threats to the ecosystem are people, erosion, raccoons that eat sea turtle eggs, invasive species, development and hurricanes. Some of the plants we observed were sea grasses, sea oats, railroad vine, mangroves, sea grapes, cabbage palm, saw palmetto, etc. Some of the animals we saw were armadillo, jellyfish, coquina, fiddler crab, sponges, evidence of gopher tortoises from their holes, dogs, lizards, fish and a spiney orb weaver. The other ecosystems beside the beach dune were tidal flats, coastal salt marshes, mangroves, coastal strands, sea grass beds, and mesic pine flatwoods.  We really ended up learning and experiencing a lot Honeymoon Island had to offer.