The Silence of the Limpkins: Where have Wakulla - Florida's Springs

The Silence of the Limpkins 

Where have Wakulla Spring’s limpkins gone, 

and is their absence connected 

to the invasive plant hydrilla 

By Susan Cerulean 

© Jim Solomon 

This PDF is best viewed in Full Screen mode directly in Adobe Reader. Set your screen resolution to 

1024x768. For Full Screen mode, press Ctrl L (Windows) or + L (Mac). Click on “Next” or “Back” 

OR use “Page Up” or “Page Down” keys to move to next page or go back to the previous page. 

Wakulla Spring’s beloved Limpkin stands on a mat of 

Wakulla’s despised invasive weed Hydrilla. 

NEXT /

FROM THE TOP OF THE TOWER, WHERE DRIPPING WET 

children generally contemplate their next trick dives, the 

chalice of Wakulla Spring wells deepest midnight blue. The water 

must be clear enough today for the glass bottom boats to run; I 

see one gliding toward me across the empty swimming area. But 

as I look more closely, I see that the shoulders of the spring, even 

sixty feet below the water’s surface, are weighted with somber 

reefs of an ominous watery weed. It is as if an enormous, dark-asdeath 

animal has fitted its body to the run of the river, blotting the 

passage of fishes and the sun. 

The waterfront at Edward Ball Wakulla Springs 

State Park is closed to swimmers, divers, and 

dabblers this morning: it’s a day appointed for 

herbicide treatment. I’ve come to observe the 

effort to revive our area’s most beloved river 

and to talk about its lost flagship bird, the 

limpkin, with longtime colleague, Dana Bryan. 

Dana, chief of the Florida Park Service’s Bureau 

of Natural and Cultural Resources, is running a 

little behind, so I clomp down the steps to the 

© Bob Thompson tower’s lower level, where a group of workers 

confer. I recognize the man in charge—Jesse Van Dyke; he’s with the 

state’s Bureau of Invasive Plant Management. He’s dressed in blue 

work shirt, boots, and close-fitting sunglasses; according to Dana, 

when Jesse heard that hydrilla had invaded Wakulla Spring, he had 

only this to say to the park’s managers: “You are toast.” 

Jesse explains today’s procedure: “For the next forty-eight 

hours, we’ll drip a half gallon per minute of this herbicide into the 

spring run. We want to treat the entire river evenly, all the way 

across. We want to get it right. The park’s been spending so much 

time and money on mechanical control these last few years: this 

At left, a handful of the bottlebrush-like hydrilla. Above,Wakulla 

Spring basin shows that the river channel is relatively clear of the 

invasive weed hydrilla following removal efforts. The greenish 

tint to the water is a result of dark water entering the aquifer and 

increased algae growth in the spring. 

© Russell Sparkman 


BACK | NEXT /

“Left unchked, hydrilla forms a canopy that 

shad out and eventually displac 

the native vegation almost complely.” 

© Bob Thompson 

A worker, at left, manually 

harvests hydrilla from 

Wakulla Spring. Piles 

of hydrilla sit on the 

Wakulla Spring boat dock. 

Herbicides are now used 

in addition to manual 

removal in order to wage 

war against hydrilla. 

– Dana Bryan, Chief, Bureau of Natural and Cultural Rourc 

hydrilla we’re after is one of the world’s physical control measures, so the park has 

most aggressive weeds.” 

turned to periodic herbicide treatments. 

A lean and energetic red-haired park 

How did the river used to run I 

ranger identifies himself as Mike Nash, and remember standing at the edge of this 

elaborates. “Last month, the boat lanes swimming area just last May on an annual 

were so full of hydrilla, we couldn’t run our Mother’s Day outing. The immense spread 

tours. We pulled out five thousand pounds of the azure spring still seemed a perfect 

of the stuff four times a day, for several stage for my sons David and Patrick and 

days in October alone. We even had to clear their friends, beautiful long-bodied teens, 

a path for Henry the Pole-Vaulting Fish; who leaped from the diving tower, over 

people count on seeing that on our glass and over, and then raced to the low dock 

bottom boat tours.” 

to warm themselves in the sun. I eased 

Dana Bryan has joined us on the 

myself deep into the river’s crystal chill, 

dock, and he jumps into the conversation, I kicked up murky clouds of khaki-green 

explaining the short, dreadful history algae that hung over the lime-rock bottom, 

of hydrilla at Wakulla Spring. “When we and I saw that the eelgrass meadows were 

found it, in spring 1997, it was still mostly gone. It can’t have been that long since 

restricted to the headspring. But then it these lovely rightful grasses still grew. I 

took off like a shot, and we’ve never been remember how they flowed with the current 

able to catch it.” 

like a woman’s long hair, spring green or 

The park staff surely has tried. Since gold, the sun lighting their lengths. To 

1997, they’ve muscled around 6.5 million swim from the dock to the tower, you’d 

pounds of the stuff from the swimming have to push past that ribboning grass, 

area and boat lanes, using dip nets, booms, your extended swimming body just inches 

hand pulling, and mechanical harvesters. above the shimmer of the plants. It’s some 

The scary weed has far outpaced these combination of the freezing cold and the 


BACK | NEXT /

© Nancy Meyers 

At right, an apple snail 

laying eggs on a bullrush 

reed is a welcomed sight 

at Wakulla Spring. Once 

abundant in the spring, 

the apple snail is now 

difficult to spot. 

loveliness that attracts me so to Wakulla. For the minutes I 

am immersed in that water, I am fully present. Not in my head. 

Nowhere else. 

We board the Limpkin, one of four river cruise boats used 

to tour up to forty-five visitors at a time, about a mile down 

the Wakulla and back to the headspring. This is 

where most everyone around here takes out-oftown 

guests on a holiday visit when you want 

to show them the best our area has to offer. It’s 

almost required. Over the side of the boat, I can 

see how the hydrilla plants, up close, resemble 

enormous bouquets of bottlebrushes packed 

tightly together, stiff to the touch not soft and 

feathery. They also look very familiar, as though 

I’ve seen them in a hundred aquariums before, 

and I probably have. Hydrilla was imported to the 

United States from India for the indoor aquarium 

trade in the 1950s. No one knew it would become 

a major invader of Florida’s lakes and rivers. I 

watch a foot-long alligator struggle through the 

hydrilla mat, coming to rest on top. It holds the 

tiny reptile like an unnatural sling. 

“Hydrilla is all about territory and light,” 

says Dana. “Left unchecked, it forms a canopy that shades 

out and eventually displaces the native vegetation almost 

completely.” 

I ask Dana how the river’s renowned wildlife populations 

have responded to the hydrilla invasion. 

“Well, we didn’t see any purple gallinules last summer, and 

I’m sure there are fewer anhingas,” he says, beginning to tick 

through a mental list. 

“And of course, the limpkins have disappeared.” 

According to the Park’s surveys, the Wakulla’s limpkin 

population has been drifting downward slowly for some years, 



BACK | NEXT /

The silencing of Wakulla’s limpkins has much to do 

with the loss of key food items from the river run: 

the ale snail in particular. 

Hydrilla grows rapidly in Wakulla Spring, creating thick mats 

that clog the river and sometimes entangle swimmers. 


although they were reliably tallied in the double digits until the 

summer count of 1997, when only a single bird was spotted. Rare, 

chocolate-brown limpkins stand about as tall as a small egret or 

heron; a spangling of white flecks its head, neck, and shoulders. 

Though the limpkin is far less showy than most of our wading birds, 

none can match its astonishing cry. The eerie resounding “Kur-r-eeow, 

kow, kow, kow, kr-ow, kr-ow” of male limpkins proclaiming their 

territories surely has bolstered Wakulla’s jungle-like Tarzan mystique; 

but all on its own, the bird’s wail evokes in us a powerful, wordless 

longing for the wild. 

The limpkin is so thoroughly missed by Park staff, they’ve 

erected an interpretive audio station in the waiting area for boat 

tours to tell the bird’s story, so it won’t be forgotten. The silencing of 

Wakulla’s limpkins, Bryan and other scientists agree, has much to do 

with the loss of key food items from the river run: the apple snail in 

particular. We’ve seen less than a handful of the snail’s easy-to-spot 

eggs on today’s tour. Apple snails, whose broad spiraled shells match 

the milk chocolate brown of the bird that so loves to eat them, are 

equipped with both gills and lungs. Mostly, though, they breathe with 

their lungs. It’d be hard for the snails to work their way from the 

river bottom through this impenetrable mat of hydrilla to reach the 

necessary air. 

“But there’s no single smoking gun that explains the loss of 

apple snails and their eggs from Wakulla,” says Dana Bryan. 

When we reach the “back jungle,” Ranger Nash cuts off the 

motor, and we drift. “This is where we do the Tarzan thing on 

our boat tours,” he says. “You can see that there are still mats of 

eelgrass back in here.” 

But here’s another disturbing sight: what eelgrass remains 

appears to be cloaked with a spectral, brownish algae. Even the 

hydrilla bears khaki-colored capes of the stuff. 

“The whole spring bowl has started getting draped with this 

algae periodically,” says Ranger Nash. 

“This algae is new here,” emphasizes Dana Bryan. “We didn’t 


BACK | NEXT /



see it at all until just a few years ago. It’s 

correlated with the increased nitrate load 

coming out of the spring. Between the total 

replacement of eelgrass with hydrilla, and 

this nutrient-gobbling algae, our spring run 

now has all the signature of an unhealthy 

system.” 

Can this be Wakulla Spring we’re talking 

about Can this be the spring described by 

an anonymous traveler in 1835 “to be of 

such perfect transparency, that the smallest 

object is seen at the immense depth of 

water below, and the spectator upon its 

surface, sits and shudders as if suspended 

bioregion is like an enormous rock sponge 

saturated with the freshest of water—our 

aquifer. As water pushes through miles 

of belowground caverns and conduits, 

it springs to the surface where it can, 

responding to the unique geography we 

call “karst.” This aquifer is the free and 

abundant source of the water we pump to 

meet all of our needs: drinking, washing, 

withdraw what we desire, and we flush our 

wastes. 

A Northwest Florida Water 

Management District study in 2002 

found—not surprisingly—that the cities of 

Tallahassee and Woodville, suburbanized 

Leon County and of course, Wakulla County, 

overlie what’s called the spring capture 

zone. In other words, most of the water 

At left, a limpkin forages 

along the banks of the 

Wakulla River in the 

company of other wading 

birds. Above, a bald 

cypress tree stands as 

a lone sentinel in the 

Wakulla River. 

on empty air” 

irrigating, industry. We’re incredibly lucky 

that wells out of Wakulla Spring is funneled 

What is this, that darkens our 

this way. But it’s just as easy to dirty this 

first below all the pipes and wastewater 

spring’s perfect heart 

underground water, and we do. Along the 

treatment facilities and septic tanks that we 

The limestone that underlies our 

way from Tallahassee to the coast, we 

care to build. 


BACK | NEXT /

If we fully believed in the sacredn of our springs, 

wouldn’t we draw a line around the ground that rharg them 

and figure out how to clean up after ourselv 

PRESENTED BY 

If we fully believed in the sacredness 

of our springs, all of them, and honored 

them, wouldn’t we draw a line around the 

ground that recharges them and figure 

out how to clean up after ourselves, and a 

better way to live 

After the Limpkin nudges into its 

stall at the boat dock and Ranger Nash 

ties her safely in place, we walk back to 

the herbicide operation at the dive tower. 

Two weeks from now, the men tell me, the 

hydrilla plants here will start to brown, 

then disintegrate bit by bit, dropping to the 

river’s bottom. 

So I return to Wakulla again in mid- 

December, on a low-ceilinged, heavy- 


clouded day. Again, the waterfront is empty; 

I go to the dive tower and sit, watching a 

mist swirl and rise from the surface of the 

river. The reefs of hydrilla are gone, killed 

by the herbicide treatment, beaten back for 

some months. 

A school of mullet fins in close now, 

since most everyone’s evacuated the cold 

water. One fish heaves clear of the spring 

run, two, three, four times, like a heavy 

skipping stone. Out beyond the dock, a glass 

bottom boat circles the headspring. “Henry,” 

calls a ranger to the fish on the bottom of 

the river. “Henry, are you there Come on 

out and give these people a show!” 

Florida Springs Initiative 

For more information about Wakulla 

Spring, please link to Florida’s 

Springs: Protecting Nature’s Gems 

Susan Cerulean is a writer living in 

Tallahassee. This essay was excerpted 

from Between Two Rivers: Stories 

from the Red Hills to the Gulf, an new 

anthology edited by Cerulean, Janisse 

Ray and Laura Newton. To purchase 

the book, visit the website of the Red 

Hills Writers Project. In Spring 2005, 

the University of Georgia Press will 

publish Cerulean’s nature memoir 

entitled Tracking Desire: A Journey 

after Swallow-tailed Kites. 


BACK 

/ GO TO NEXT PAGE

The Silence of the Limpkins: Where have Wakulla - Florida's Springs

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?