Video
Everglades Gulf Coast
Descriptive Transcript
Description Narrator: A group of alligators thrash into the water. Fish swim around underwater vegetation. A controlled fire burns a habitat. A bird appears in a hole in a dead tree. A ranger gives a guided canoe tour. Aerial footage of Mangroves. A snail glides along a tree branch.
Everglades National Park. National Park Service logo.
Wind blows sand into a shell on a beach. A fiddler crab crawls out of a hole in the sand. The camera pans across a beach and mangroves at low tide.
Everglades Gulf Coast. Exploring the Ten Thousand Islands.
Close up of a red mangrove tree. A Ranger stands on a narrow boardwalk in a mangrove forest.
Speaker 1: Approximately 1.3 million acres of Everglades National Park is wilderness, and very few people really get off the beaten path. But this is a really, great jumping off point for doing that. You can go out. Fishermen love this area. Paddlers also love this area and probably one of my favorite things to do here is paddling.
Gulf Coast Visitor Center's really all water accessible, so unless you're going to get out on the water, do a canoe trip, maybe go do some kayaking. It's really difficult to enjoy what the Gulf Coast has to offer. I would definitely recommend planning your trips with the wind, if possible, but definitely with the tides as well. This is all a tidally influenced area.
Description Narrator: The park entrance sign: National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service logo. Everglades National Park, Gulf Coast.
Speaker 1: So, the Gulf Coast Visitor Center is here in Everglades City. It's a lot different than what people really think about when they think of the Everglades, and we're kind of tucked away in the northwest part of the park.
Description Narrator: A park ranger hat sits on the front desk in the visitor center with park brochures.
Speaker 1: But it's definitely a hidden jewel. There's something out here for everyone. We are in a small town so you can find anything from lodging to restaurants to any of the basic amenities that you will need.
We have a lot of different tours that we offer here at Everglades National Park. A lot of different ways to be able to really explore this without spending a whole day or trying to get out in the backcountry.
Description Narrator: A sign outside the visitor center lists boat tour information.
It'll take you out through the 10,000 islands, out to the edge of the Gulf of Mexico. And people like this one for a lot of reasons. One, just getting out on the water. Sometimes you might see a dolphin, sometimes you might see a manatee. It's a great way to get out and get a sense for the 10,000 islands.
Description Narrator: Visitors on a boat tour. A flock of birds fly around the boat, the visitors look around as the guide speaks over an intercom.
Speaker 2: Yes...maybe some of the Ruddy Turnstones, there's also some of the Sandwich Terns mixed in here. I brought us back here, if you look out in front of the boat and to the right, you'll see at the top of the trees, there's an osprey nest there. And there is an osprey nestled down in this nest, you may be able to see her head as you go little further forward.
Description Narrator: A large osprey nest sits at the top of a tree. Visitors point and take photos.
Speaker 2: The female is the primary incubator, but the male, he’ll do all the hunting.
Speaker 1: But then there are also several different Ranger-led programs. Usually, we have canoe trips.
Description Narrator: A ranger paddling a canoe, talks to visitors.
Speaker 3: Everglades City a kind of touched on a little bit, real rich in sort of a history. Yeah, 1947 President Harry Truman stood at this airport and dedicated the park. We'll talk a little bit about that, too, as we go along.
Description Narrator: Black-and-white photographs of President Truman speaking at a podium and getting into a vehicle during the park’s dedication.
Visitors paddle a canoe between islands of mangroves.
Speaker 3: This area here is an estuary. What an estuary is, is we sort of have freshwater that comes in from the north and it mixes with saltwater from the Gulf of Mexico and creates what we call brackish water. So that's sort of what we're going to be exploring today.
Speaker 1: Some of the places you can camp, if you go all the way out to the Gulf of Mexico…
Description Narrator: Footage of the limestone shore of Jewel Key.
Speaker 1: …you can camp here on beaches, but there's also more inland route from the North, the Wilderness Waterway. It's a 99-mile boating trail, or canoe, kayak trail, however you want to do it. Starting here and going all the way to the south end of the park here in Flamingo.
Description Narrator: A map follows the Wilderness Waterway from the Gulf Coast Visitor Center to Flamingo.
Speaker 1: So, it's a little bit more inland. It opens up to some large bays. But you can stay on different ground sites, but there's also chickee sites, so these chickee sites are elevated over the water, and it's really just a platform to put a tent for the night.
Description Narrator: Footage of Watson Place on land and Sweetwater Chickee over the water. The chickee has two wooden platforms raised above the water with roofs and walkways connecting them to a toilet in between.
Cameron Gillie, an artist/photographer at Everglades National Park, readies his canoe at the Wilderness Waterway Canoe Launch.
Cameron Gillie: I'm in Everglades City, here at the Ranger station. I'm going to be, over the next eleven days, I'm going to Flamingo, which is roughly, I think on the outside, is going to be about 80 miles. It's the largest wilderness area east of the Mississippi. It's fantastic to be out there completely immersed and in nature because, I always do my best work when I'm just living it 24 hours a day. But once you get a day's paddle away from Everglades City, you're by yourself for the most part.
Description Narrator: Cameron launches his canoe and paddles into the open bay.
It's a great experience to do the West Coast, I mean, most people see the Everglades from a road, you know, the park service road coming down, which is pretty, but you don't really get to see what it's like, especially out here. This is a different area and very pretty, and you kind of, you have to get your feet wet to see the Everglades.
Description Narrator: Cameron’s canoe floats away from the launch, and he runs into the water to retrieve it.
Cameron Gillie: Oh! [laughter]
Speaker 1: So really, the first thing you guys have to do for...if you guys want to go into the backcountry on the Wilderness Waterway, definitely, check out our website www.nps.gov/ever, and right there you can find the Wilderness Trip Planner.
Description Narrator: A screenshot of the Wilderness Trip Planner, which lists information on seasons, routes, winter hours, permits, etc.
Speaker 1: The wilderness trip planner is really what you need to do, the checklist, to really start planning your trip.
Description Narrator: The ranger laughs as Cameron’s canoe floats away again.
A spider crab underwater.
An interview with a park ranger on a boat.
Speaker 4: How common is it for boaters to get stuck out here?
Speaker 5: I think from the locals who have lived here all their lives, they say nobody doesn't get stuck. So, everyone's gotten stuck at least once. But from what I hear happens a lot. Out here, I tell them to instead of go as fast as you think you can, go slow, and look at what you're getting into. Read your charts. They usually tell you the average water, so if it says one foot, maybe want to go somewhere else.
Description Narrator: A view of the GPS screen on a moving boat.
Two fishermen in a boat.
Speaker 6: Third time out here and just do a little more comfortable about how to get to the fishing places, getting out of the pass and all that. I mean, it's challenging and you can't just rely on maps and everything, so…
Speaker 4: What else are you relying on?
Speaker 6: A handheld GPS. So, without that, I think it would be pretty tough.
Description Narrator: Two men fish from an idling boat. An osprey flies from its nest on top of a sign: Manatee Zone. Slow Speed. Minimum Wake.
Visitors paddle a canoe to Sandfly Island.
A sign reads: Welcome to Sandfly Island. This 1-mile trail circles the island, leading to sites of historic interest in a semi-tropical forest. As part of a national park, Sandfly Island belongs to the nation. Please take care of your property by not littering, disturbing its features, or collecting souvenirs.
Another ranger stands in the water on the mangrove shoreline and walks the inland trail through the forest.
Speaker 3: This is Sandfly Island, and we're actually on the other side of Chokoloskee Bay, so on the other side of where the visitor center is. This is the only trail that we have within our district, sort of a walking trail, is on the Sandfly Island. It's about a mile long and it's sort of a loop. Real, rich history out here. This is a shell mound. So, this was actually built up by the Calusa Indians. That's what these shell sites are made of, are individual shells.
Description Narrator: The ranger crouches down and picks up shells off the ground. He points to a map of the island.
Speaker 3: You have these oyster shells here, and these Whelk shells that you sort of see scattered about, and the trail itself goes completely around the horseshoe shape itself. And the green here represents high ground. And there's some theories about sort of why the Calusa Indians made this sort of that horseshoe shape. Maybe they use this to actually trap fish as sort of a fishing tool itself, putting up a net during a high tide. And as the tide sort of went out, they trap sort of fish in there as well.
Description Narrator: A ranger on the trail picks up a mangrove leaf from the ground.
Speaker 1: You see this leaf here. All these trees we see around us are constantly losing these leaves, an acre of mangrove trees are able to lose several tons of leaf per year, and by doing that, they're really starting the food chain from the ground up. These mangrove leaves are eaten up by these micro-organisms. Micro-organisms are eaten by the smaller creatures as you go up the food chain until you get to the larger animals that people really like to see in this area.
People like to see the dolphins. People like to see the Ospreys. Occasionally, we'll see a bald eagle and the wading birds as well.
Description Narrator: Pelicans sit on top of trees along the water. An underwater view of fish swimming among the mangrove roots.
Speaker 1: That's what people really like to see. But sometimes they forget about the smaller life. That's really eating these leaves here.
We have crabs, we have snails. We have so many different little life forms. And unless you really take some time out here, it's very difficult to really get a grasp of what this place has to offer. Now, mangrove trees are trees that have adapted an ability to live in this saltwater environment and by living in a saltwater environment, they can do what no other trees can do. They really take over this area. So, all of these 10,000 islands are just filled with these trees.
Description Narrator: Aerial footage of islands covered in Mangroves.
Speaker 1: Here at the Gulf Coast Visitor Center. You can really come out and see us at any time of the year for the boat tours.
Description Narrator: A tour boat pulls into the dock next to a Pelican sitting on a post. Visitors sit at a picnic table at Watson Place campsite.
Speaker 1: It's a great way to see the park, but if you guys want to come out, you to do some backcountry campn’ and want to do some fishing. You might want to think twice if you're trying to do it during the summer months. I'd say really, our peak season is late November and then into early April.
Description Narrator: A turtle crawls through the forest. A horseshoe crab digs down into the muddy sand. A Fiddler crab craws out of the sand. Rangers crouch down, looking at crabs in the sand.
A ranger walks down a boardwalk trail.
A black-and-white photo by Cameron Gillie titled Wilderness Waterway, shows a mangrove tree surrounded by mud at low tide.
A Fiddler crab on a beach waves its big claw.
U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service. Everglades National Park.
Everglades National Park video.
Featuring: Ranger Kent Melchiors, Ranger Brendan Ward, and Ranger Meredith Riester.
Cameron Gillie. www.CameronGillie.com
Producer, Director, Editor: Jennifer Brown.
Executive Producers: Allyson Gantt, Greg Litten, Alan Scott.
Music performed by: General Fuzz, ‘Four Prophets’ from the Soulful Filling album, and Jami Sieber, ‘Invisible Wings’ from the Lush Mechanique album, Magnatunes Records, www.magnatunes.com.
Description
Informational video about exploring the Everglades Gulf Coast and Ten Thousand Islands.
Duration
10 minutes, 50 seconds
Credit
NPS video by Jennifer Brown
Date Created
08/12/2010
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