Florida Historical Society Stetson Kennedy Award

Florida Book Awards, Silver Medal for Florida Nonfiction

Exploring the environmental history of an important natural area

The largest open water estuary in Florida, Tampa Bay has been a flashpoint of environmental struggles and action in recent years. This book goes beneath today’s news headlines to explore how people have interacted with nature in the region throughout its long history.

In Tampa Bay, Evan Bennett reveals that humans have been part of the bay’s ecology since the estuary took its modern form 2,000 years ago, along with the communities of fish, birds, reptiles, and mammals that proliferated in its seagrass meadows, tidal salt flats, and mangrove forests. Bennett discusses the natural resources that drew people to settle there, the trade that encouraged development, and the shipping and industry that increased biological and ecological change.

While the past 150 years have seen serious environmental damage from dredging, water pollution, red tides, and more, Bennett shows how people have been fighting to clean up the bay and regain a balance with nature. Informed by the latest in marine science, area environmentalists, policymakers, and citizens are working to create a model for other societies that have developed in fragile natural areas.

The first book to examine the environmental history of the region, Tampa Bay uncovers deep-rooted relationships between water, land, and people and offers hope for bringing threatened coastal spaces back from the brink.

A volume in the series Florida in Focus, edited by Andrew K. Frank