On a kayak tour organized by the Wild Space Gallery in late June, I glided over a stretch of the Chassahowitzka River, just past the Seven Sisters Springs. As I paddled by, I saw huge clumps of algae floating in the water. This used to be just a pristine, crystal clear spring. You could see clear down to the bottom. Now it looks kind of green.
This is a little different than what Benjamin Dimmitt first photographed 20 years ago.
Dimmitt, a Clearwater native, has lugged his medium-format film camera to places like this in Citrus County for decades. His photographs of the same place shown years apart are on display at St. Petersburg's Wild Space Gallery through the end of July.
"You see how pristine it was, and then you see it a certain number years later," said gallery director Leslie Elsasser, "and you see it's completely altered."
The exhibition is called An Unflinching Look: Elegy for a Landscape. Elegy is the Greek word for "song of mourning." These photos are a reflection of mourning for a place that no longer looks the way it once did.
In one display, the first photograph shows a vibrant forest surrounding a bend in the river. In the second - taken decades later at the same spot - spindly limbs bow into the water. The tops of palm trees are bare, their trunks shorn of all vegetation. The landscape is almost unrecognizable.
Gallery curator Noel Smith calls this technique "rephotography."
"The power of rephotography is such an incredible, powerful tool for conservation," she said. "That idea that you can see over time the degradation or the changes, and I think that's very interesting for people, but it's also emotional to see how things change.
Dimmitt wasn't available to talk about his exhibit, but his niece, Mallory Lykes Dimmitt, heads the Florida Wildlife Corridor Foundation. It's dedicated to preserving connections between the state's fast-dwindling natural areas.
"You can see just how pervasive the change is, and it allows our brain to kind of process the before and the after," she said. "When you're just paddling down it, you're seeing what it is now, but it's hard to picture what it was like before. So I think that's the beauty of this photography over time."
Mallory Dimmitt said her image of her uncle is "up to here in water with the tripod and the camera out there."
She's been coming to the "Chaz" springs since she was a little kid. Speaking to the paddlers over clumps of green algae clouding the otherwise clear springs, she recalled what it used to look like.
"I remember this being full of green eelgrass, and there was enough flow coming out of here that you would just, you know, the eelgrass lays over on its side, is right up at the surface, and has all kinds of life within it," she said from her kayak. "And as we just paddled up that run, it's shocking to me how much- there's a little bit of grass, but it's all covered in filamentous algae. And that algae has really taken over the river."
There are several culprits. Climate change means saltwater backs up the flow of fresh water, killing palm trees downstream. And human impacts include over-pumping groundwater, which lessens the spring's flow. Septic tanks leach nutrients that feed the algae.
"Just think of upstream of us where this water source comes from Sugarmill Woods and (U.S. Highway) 19 and the development just east of here and between here and 19 as well," Mallory Dimmitt said. "We're in an area of the world where most homes are on septic and not on sewer, and we've got leaching from that, from the roads and from lawns and all of human life that increases the nutrients that are in the water."
As ocean levels rise, saltwater intrudes on what used to be a freshwater habitat. Those results are very apparent in many of the photographs.
"As you look downriver, you can tell there are many more trunks of palms than there are tops of palms," she said. "And so part of what we're seeing is the loss of the vibrancy of this palm hammock over time as saltwater intrudes and as their roots are inundated in saltwater, they lose vigor. That means that the canopy is reduced and ultimately the tops of the palms will die off and you'll be left with a lot of standing snags."
One of Benjamin Dimmitt's photographs is called "Requiem for a Landscape." But Mallory Dimmit said it doesn't have to be an elegy for future generations. We can cut down on spring pollution by hooking up leaky septic tanks to wastewater treatment plants. We can regulate how much water we pump out of the aquifer. We can cut back on planet-warming emissions.
Instead of an elegy, she says the future could be a cause for hope.
An Unflinching Look: Elegy for a Landscape is on display through July 25 at the Florida Wildlife Corridor Foundation's Wild Space Gallery, 2606 Fairfield Ave S., Building 7C, in St. Petersburg.
