CAPE CORAL, Fla. (WINK) \u2014 Hurricane Ian changed Southwest Florida’s coastline, and one Cape Coral woman says those changes have put local wildlife in danger.<\/p>\n
Patti Sullivan has watched manatees use her backyard waterway as their highway for years. She brought concerns about their safety to WINK Listens in Cape Coral.<\/p>\n
“They’re like my babies,” Sullivan said. “You know, we’ve seen them give birth out there, and you know they’re they’re just beautiful beasts.”<\/p>\n
A barge attached to a nearby seawall gave way during Hurricane Ian’s storm surge, washing away the wall and the sand it held in place. That narrowed the channel the manatees share with boaters.<\/p>\n
“We’ve had a couple die here,” Sullivan said.<\/p>\n
The storm created what locals now call “Ian’s Island” where the passageway used to be. Sullivan said boaters fish and play there, but the waterway is much narrower than before.<\/p>\n
“We don’t have what we had before the passageway,” Sullivan said.<\/p>\n
Sullivan’s neighbor, Preston Peacock, shares her love of the water, the wildlife and concerns about boaters speeding through the area. The channel is a no-wake zone, meaning boats should travel about 5 miles per hour without making waves.<\/p>\n
“This channel is very narrow,” Peacock said. “You get people passing each other as they’re going up the creek here, and it’s crazy.”<\/p>\n
Peacock said some boaters ignore the rules and speed through at 30 miles per hour. Sullivan witnessed the consequences firsthand when she asked a boater to slow down because of nearby manatees.<\/p>\n
“He flipped me off and then hit one,” Sullivan said.<\/p>\n
Both residents want better boater education, more patrols and improved signage warning about manatees. Plans to dredge the area exist but remain on hold until funding and permits come through, like many Hurricane Ian recovery projects.<\/p>\n
“There’s got to be some kind of compromise here,” Sullivan said.<\/p>\n
Peacock hopes boaters will follow the rules so everyone can safely enjoy the water. “It’d just be nice to see people respect the rules of the water,” Peacock said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CAPE CORAL, Fla. (WINK) \u2014 Hurricane Ian changed Southwest Florida’s coastline, and one Cape Coral woman says those…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":411535,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210,28,1521],"class_list":["post-411534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news","tag-florida","tag-southwest-florida"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=411534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411534\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/411535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}