Florida Everglades Airboating

This is the fifth installment of 12 Things to Experience on an Everglades Airboat Tour which can also be downloaded as a free eBook.

Mangroves are one of the true Florida natives. Florida has an estimated 469,000 acres of mangrove forests. These mangroves are huge factors contributing to the overall health of the state’s southern coastal zone. They provide an ecosystem which traps and cycles various organic materials, chemical elements, and important nutrients.

The roots of a mangrove act not only as physical traps, but also provide a surface for various marine organisms to attach themselves. Many of these attached organisms can also filter water through their bodies and, in turn, trap and cycle nutrients.

Mangroves actually thrive in salty environments because they are able to obtain fresh water from the saltwater. Some mangroves secrete excess salt through their leaves, others are able to block absorption of salt at their roots. In Florida, there are 3 species of Mangroves:

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This is the third installment of 12 Things to Experience on an Everglades Airboat Tour which can also be downloaded as a free eBook.

The Everglades and the 10,000 Islands are some of the last unexplored wilderness of Florida. The area considered the “Everglades” is defined as subtropical wetlands in the southern portion of Florida. It comprises the southern half of a large watershed.

The Everglades system begins near Orlando, where the Kissimmee River discharges into Lake Okeechobee. Water leaving the lake in the wet season forms a slow-moving river that is 60 miles wide and over 100 miles long. This river flows southward across a limestone shelf to Florida Bay at the southern end of the state.

The Everglades are shaped by water and fire, as this area experiences frequent flooding in the wet season and drought in the dry season. These sawgrass marshes are part of a complex system of interdependent ecosystems which include:

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This is the third installment of 12 Things to Experience on an Everglades Airboat Tour which can also be downloaded as a free eBook.

Not only is an airboat the most effective way of getting around in the Everglades, swamps or marshlands…sometimes it is the ONLY way. Reeds and grasses of swampland can easily tangle in the propellers of boats. This can prevent even shallowdraft rowboats from traveling in these paths. A flat-bottomed, air-propelled boat may be your only option. This is why the airboat was born!

The first airboat, called the Ugly Duckling, was built in 1905 in Nova Scotia, Canada by a team led by Dr. Alexander Graham Bell. It was used to test various engines and prop configurations. Glenn Curtiss, an associate of Dr. Bell, was reported to have registered the first airboat in Florida in 1920.

By the 1930s you could see homemade airboats traveling through the swamps and marshes of Florida and Louisiana as a means of getting around. There is at least one company in Florida that claims to have been providing airboat rides as entertainment since the mid 1930s. But how exactly does it work?

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