Green Floridian

Lately the family and I have been avid fishers and I’ve started to realize why they call it ‘fishing’ and not ‘catching.’  But just the other day, lo and behold! we caught a fish. But as we went home to eat our delicious fresh caught Sea Bass, I remembered reading about Mercury in Fish and after re-researching think it’s important for all Floridians to know what is edible and what isn’t healthy especially if you go fishing often.

Mercury is released into the air by power plants, chemical manufacturers and industrial facilities it then settles onto the ocean, river or lake surface. From the surface, the mercury becomes ingested by bacterias. It is the bacteria that transforms Mercury into Methyl Mercury, which is easily absorbed in the human body.

As the food chain grows and the bacteria is eaten by smaller fish, which are eaten by bigger fish – instead of dissolving, the mercury accumulates rapidly. Its quite possible to have a top level predator fish like mackerel or tuna with mercury concentrations that are 10,000 times higher than their surroundings!  So even if companies have stopped emitting so much mercury from their productions, it will still take a very long time to see the decrease in the food chain.

That being said, there are two fish that are just not safe to eat, period. They include

- King Mackerel 31 inches or more

- Shark  43 inches or more 

The EPA says that women of childbearing age and children should never eat the fish listed below, but I’d like to add that it doesn’t seem like a good idea for the sick to eat these fish either, considering their levels of mercury.

- Blackfin Tuna

- Cobia

- Any size King Mackerel

- Little Tunny

- Any size Shark

In addition, there are fish that you can only eat once a month or once a week, as listed in THIS ARTICLE  by the Florida Department of health.  As a fisher person it is essential to know how much mercury the fish you catch have so you can eat the proper amount and not intoxicate yourself with this substance. 

It’s amazing to know that we live in an area where the saying “teach a man to fish” is no longer applicable. If chemicals like mercury are already prevalentin our waters, why would we risk loosing more ecosystems through environmentally unstable practices like off-shore drilling? Especially when there’s far more than mercury that build up in fish, PCBs are also found in many Florida species, and lake fish suffer from high Arsenic levels.

so important for the summer here in Florida - learn the fish and their toxicity in the areas you love to fish.

Adorable, yes. Very bad for the environment, also yes.

This is the Cuban Tree Frog.

This invasive is a native to Cuba, the Bahamas and the Cayman Islands.  Even though there’s that whole embargo with Cuba right now, Cuban tree frogs were first introduced during the 1920’s in the Florida Keys, probably by boat as it is a notorious hitchhiker. At this point, almost 70 years later, Cuban tree frogs are a big problem for most of Florida.  As seen in the image below, green indicates areas that are densely populated with this species.

How to Identify a Cuban Tree Frog 

Colors

     There is no single color of Cuban tree frog, as you can see by the picture at the top of the post, the frogs that I found by my front door were gold and green, but their colors can vary from creamy white to light brown, even yellow, green, or dark brown. Sometimes they have bands across their front legs and a yellowish wash of color where the legs connect to the body

Warts

     All Cuban tree frogs have warty skin on their back, and rough skin everywhere else. This is a good way to tell if it is a Cuban tree frog or a native, but the best way to tell is the…

Toe Pads

     Cuban tree frogs have HUGE toe pads.  If you look in the picture at the beginning of the post you distinctly notice the very large toe pads. And in the diagram below, the bottom foot is of a Cuban tree frog and the top is of a native frog. This is the most distinct way to tell if the frog you are dealing with is a Cuban.

Why Are They Invasive

Cuban Tree Frogs cause ecological harm to the current ecosystem, most importantly they are predators to the native tree frogs – running them out of their habitat and eating those who don’t leave.   They also feed on insects, lizards and other small creatures. Floridians who have Cuban tree frogs in their yards notice a distinct lack of other native animals.  Those animals that are not on the menu are driven out of their homes by a larger and more competitive species.

Below is a picture of a Cuban tree frog eating it’s native tree frog competition

Not only are the adults far more competitive, the tadpoles are as well.  Both invasive species and native species use the same nesting grounds, and the invasive tadpole actually inhibits the growth and success rate of the native frogs tadpoles through severe competition for food and shelter.

Ecological effects are the most damaging, but they are not the only consequence of the rapid increase of Cuban Tree Frog populations.  these frogs tend to stay near, or on, homes and businesses. They hunt at night by waiting on walls near lights to catch unsuspecting prey. Inevitably the defaecate on the walls which creates a rather unsightly, albeit, abstract piece of wall art. From personal experience, the stains don’t go away, even after bleach and a stiff scrubber brush.

     These frogs also use any excuse to get into the house, which makes opening the door at night kind of like wack-a-mole. maybe you’ll get one in the house, maybe it’ll stay on the wall outside. From this behavior, these frogs can eventually end up in water pipe lines, toilets and showers.

What Can You Do

 
First thing to do if you notice a tree frog and live outside of the green in the Florida diagram above, please notify tadpole@ufl.edu, then if you’re brave enough, euthanize it. Putting them in a bag in the freezer is the same idea as putting a frog in water and heating it to boiling, they don’t feel their death.

Or, if you have a hard time with killing the frogs, you can move their home away from the front door and turn off the porch lights for a while so they wouldn’t attract insects and then attract frogs. Then inform the local agricultural center to let them know there is a Cuban Tree Frog infestation.

Hello and Welcome to the new and exciting home of the Green Floridian Blog. I suppose I’ll start by introducing myself.

I’m Becca, a student at USF and part of the Green Floridian. I’ve been studying Environmental Policy for a little over a year but have been gardening in Florida for 3 years now.  I’ll be updating the blog with information that I’ve been learning in class and in the yard. Some beginning topics should include:

- Weekly Herbs and Uses
- Weekly Invasive Species, both plant and animal
- Urban Farming (a personal favorite)
- Ocean Trash
- Dredging
- Political changes
- Organic gardening and Victory Gardens
- Interesting and thought provoking material learned in classes along the way

My goal is to share my journey of learning about our environmental impacts and simple solutions to start turning our generation into one that thinks about what it’s doing to the environment. It’s not all about lobbying government to create green programs, its about solutions that can be found in every home and each community.

However, because of my ties to Florida, 99% of my portion of this blog will be dedicated to issues that Florida is involved in. For example, as much as I may want to discuss the huge problems of overpopulation in India, that will not happen in this blog - We may, rather, discuss the overpopulation of Pinellas County