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Long before theme parks began to sprout from Orlando’s swamps, Florida’s freshwater springs were among the region’s main attractions.

Native Americans used bows for thousands of years before Spanish conquistadors arrived in the 1500s. Conquistadors’ reports of clear water gushing from hollow holes in forest floors fueled myths about the forest’s existence. fountain of youth.

A few hundred years later, when sources of sulfur were believed to have therapeutic properties, White Sulfur SpringsOn the banks of the Suwannee River, it became one of Florida’s first commercial tourist destinations. In the early 1900s, the first introduction of glass-bottom boats gave tourists the opportunity to get a fishy eye view of Florida’s water resources, and the pristine underwater landscapes attracted early filmmakers. Dozens of movies and television shows have been shot underwater at Silver Springs, a group of water bodies in Marion County alone, including “Sea Hunt” and “The Creature From the Black Lagoon.”

Florida has the most dense collection of freshwater springs on the planet. Every day, the state’s more than 1,000 freshwater springs collectively discharge billions of gallons of groundwater to the surface. The Springs provide critical habitat for aquatic animals, including the iconic Florida manatee, and anchor Florida’s inland water-based entertainment industry. Visitors from around the world come to Florida’s springs to fish, canoe, tub, swim, and scuba dive through miles of underwater caverns that connect water sources to the aquifer and connect water pipes to the surface. Springs tourism injects cash into rural economies across the state.

Yet, despite their key role in the state’s tourism industry, Florida’s water resources are at the center of a slow-motion environmental tragedy.

Over the past few decades, development, population growth, climate change, over-pumping of the aquifer, and pollution from agriculture and sewage have damaged Florida’s resources. Many springs show significantly reduced water flow. Others have stopped flowing altogether.

Kissengen Spring was one of the first recorded losses. More than 20 million gallons of water a day once poured into the Peace River from the Kissengen Spring. Spring sport diving platforms and baths and II. It was used as a vacation spot by members of the military during World War II.

Between the 1930s and 1950s, the water flow from the source gradually decreased to a trickle level. In the early 1960s, spring stopped flowing completely. A United States Geological Survey report revealed that pumping groundwater between the 1950s and 1975 lowered groundwater levels by a staggering 60 feet. When the height of the water in the aquifer feeding the spring fell below the height of the source vent, the flow of water stopped.

The ever-decreasing water tables have also clogged the water supply of White Sulfur Springs, one of Florida’s first tourist destinations to stop flowing for the first time in 1977.

At the same time, aquifers were depleted, while pollution from septic tanks, sewage, farm manure, and limited animal feeding operations flooded the sources with excess nutrients, fueling algae growth in springs across the state. The white, sandy bottoms and rippling eel thickets seen in movies from the 1940s and 1950s have been replaced by thick green, hairy algae blankets that cover all underwater surfaces. Without gentian grass, the foundation of healthy resources, ecosystems around resources collapse.

So much algae has accumulated in Silver Springs that volunteer scuba divers remove it by hand. Members of the Silver Springs Professional Dive Team descend each month to clear algae from the bottom of the glass-bottom boats so visitors can view old underwater movie sets that divers need to clean up too.

The State of Florida formally acknowledged that most of Florida’s resources were in trouble more than two decades ago, when then-governor Jeb Bush signed into law the law creating the Florida Springs Initiative. The program provided the first of several subsequent pools of money for research, monitoring, education, and landowner assistance to reduce the flow of sewage and fertilizer to resources and to address declining spring flows.

The data collected as a result of the initiative has allowed scientists to trace the relentless decline of Florida’s water resources in unbearable detail. More importantly, these data show that efforts to conserve resources have so far been ineffective, as nutrient pollution continues to increase.

While many resources are in decline, ongoing restoration work on the spring-fed Crystal River on Florida’s Gulf Coast shows that some of the damage can be reversed. Crystal River is the second largest spring group in the state of Florida. Decades ago, the gin clearness of the Crystal River made it a famous destination for fishing and scuba diving. However, in the 1960s and 1970s, development, dredging of channels for boat-based communities, and pollution triggered a series of events that caused the river’s eel beds to collapse and were replaced by algae blankets in the following years. Crystal River’s famous visibility deteriorated until it rarely exceeded 10 feet.

In the last six years, non-governmental organizations Save Crystal River and aquatic restoration company Sea and Coastline It used a combination of state and federal funds to remove more than a quarter billion pounds of algae and nutrient-rich scum from the bottom of the Crystal River and plant more than 350,000 eel plants.

As replanted eelgrass beds have expanded, they’ve improved visibility and now even support a year-round population of Florida’s most famous vegetarians: manatee.

The successful eel replanting project hasn’t solved all of Crystal River’s problems. Sea level rise and pumping of groundwater continue to reduce the flow of water to the Crystal River’s springs, and the water leaving continues to be slightly saltier. While there is clearly more work to be done, continued improvements in water clarity and a growing manatee population support a thriving ecotourism industry and show what can be achieved when state governments and local communities work together and leverage scientific data to save their resources.

jason gulley He is an associate professor of geology at the University of South Florida, a diving instructor, and an environmental, science, and exploration photographer based in Tampa, Fla. Instagram.