Midnight Pass effects now visible in Little Sarasota Bay

After three months since Hurricane Milton reopened it, experts say signs point to the pass staying open for now.


Midnight Pass on Oct. 17, 2024, looking from Little Sarasota Bay to the Gulf of Mexico. Hurricanes Helene and Milton opened up the Pass after it was closed in 1983.
Midnight Pass on Oct. 17, 2024, looking from Little Sarasota Bay to the Gulf of Mexico. Hurricanes Helene and Milton opened up the Pass after it was closed in 1983.
Photo by Michael Harris
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Several months after Hurricane Milton reopened Midnight Pass, experts and boaters keeping a close eye on the pass and the surrounding ecosystem say things are changing for the better. 

David Tomasko, executive director of the Sarasota Bay Estuary Program, says people heading out on the water in 2025 will notice a new look to Little Sarasota Bay. 

“The water is going to look different,” he said, noting the recent brown color of the water, caused by tannin from naturally occurring decay of mangrove leaves, is being flushed away. 

“It doesn't look as much like iced tea. It looks a little bit more like, you know, the Gulf of Mexico, right?” he said.

The clearer water will also allow sea grass to increase in some areas, and be lost in others because of the scouring action of the increased water flow. “The water is moving in so quickly, in some areas there's sea grass loss,” Tomasko observed. "But overall, you would anticipate there to be an increase in sea grass in Little Sarasota Bay.”

Tour boat captain Danielle Nutten says she’s noticed the bay has changed color. “It’s, like, a light greenish color,” she said. “It would clear up at certain times, especially in the winter. But now it's, it's just got a different hue to it because the salinity has changed so much.”

A hurricane in the early 1920s opened the inlet that separated Casey Key and Siesta Key. The pass remained open until 1983 when the Army Corps of Engineers, while building the Intracoastal Waterway, deepened Little Sarasota Bay and deposited dredged material at the inlet.

Two property owners used the material to fill in the pass to protect their property from erosion. 

Plugging the inlet choked off the exchange of tidal waters and had resulted in poorer water quality in Little Sarasota Bay. 


Tracking the pass’s ebb and flow

Dr. Ping Wang, a geologist at the University of South Florida, has been studying Midnight Pass for decades. “My interest is … the morphology, the stability of the inlet,” he explained, “whether it would stay open at a particular location, whether the inlet will get wider and deeper for safe navigation, whether the inlet will migrate around and eventually close, and how Is that going to interact or impact the surrounding beaches.”

The fact that the flow of water and sand seems to be migrating northward, however, has researchers puzzled.

Boats numbering in the hundreds came out in support of keeping Midnight Pass open.
Photo by Ian Swaby

Wang says in Florida, migrating sand typically flows from north to south. “Why, in that particular area, is the sand is flowing from south to north? That's another question I'm trying to answer,” he said.

Nutten says the northward flow is visible during incoming tides. “There's a demarcation line, you can actually see it,” she said. “It appears to be taking a left turn north when it hits the Intracoastal Waterway.”


Will the pass stay open?

The pass itself seems like it’s here to stay for the time being, although Tomasko stopped short of describing it as stable. 

“I would say persistent but dynamic,” he said. “It will move over time. It will move to the north. It'll move to the south.”

Wang is optimistic it will stay open on its own, due to the power of the flow of water as it moves into Little Sarasota Bay from the Gulf of Mexico and back out with the changing tides.

“There is a general understanding based on a lot of study, particularly of Florida's inlets, that if the flow through the inlet is greater than 3 feet per second, then the inlet tends to be stable.”

Wang says the flow rate at the moment is stronger than that. "My research hypothesis assumption is that the flow through the inlet right now is strong enough to keep it open.”

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And Mother Nature may be eventually getting some help from Sarasota County. The West Coast Inland Navigation District recently granted a county request to designate Midnight Pass and its north and south channels as “public channels.”

The decision means Sarasota County can spend its share of property tax money collected by the district on projects related to the pass.

The WCIND is a special taxing district made up of Sarasota, Manatee, Charlotte and Lee counties, with a mission to "preserve and enhance the commercial, recreational, and ecological values" of area waterways.

WCIND funds are used to maintain and enhance such things as public navigation channels and inlets, boating access facilities, waterfront parks, piers and special structures.

The funds could be used for things including dredging and navigational signs on the pass, although no plans for any work have been made, according to the district’s Executive Director Justin McBride.

Tomasko said Hurricane Milton’s dredging operation was a godsend. “Frankly, dude, it was done for free. It's maybe the one good thing that came out of the hurricane season in our local waters.” 

 

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Jim DeLa

Jim DeLa is the digital content producer for the Observer. He has served in a variety of roles over the past four decades, working in television, radio and newspapers in Florida, Colorado and Hawaii. He was most recently a reporter with the Community News Collaborative, producing journalism on a variety of topics in Sarasota, Manatee and DeSoto counties; and as a digital producer for ABC7 in Sarasota.

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