SEA ISLE MARINA & YACHTING CENTER
Miami, Florida
Contact: Mr. Jerome Hollo
Florida East Coast Realty, Inc.
100 South Biscayne Boulevard, Suite 1100
Miami, Florida 33131
Construction Cost: $ XXXXXXXXX
The SeaIsleMarina & YachtingCenter is a large full-service marina facility along Biscayne Bay in the heart of downtown Miami. The Marina includes fuel services, marina store, slip rentals and charters, and also serves as one of three (3) display locations for the Miami International Boat Show. In order to accommodate the boat show, and to obtain the required depths for safe navigation and display, the marina requires maintenance dredging and a special events lease to use State-Owned Sovereign Submerged Lands.
The Chappell Group, Inc. is responsible for the on-going seagrass and benthic resource monitoring as required in the environmental permits for the marina. Due to the presence of seagrass within the marina basin, monitoring of the coverage by seagrass is required to document the recovery of the seagrass after the maintenance dredging of the marina and access channel from the Intracoastal Waterway (ICWW). Seagrass monitoring is conducted on a semi-annual basis, in April and August of each year to encompass the acknowledged seagrass growing season. Biologists from the Chappell Group, Inc. conduct survey transects throughout the project footprint, encompassing over 5 acres of submerged bay bottom within the marina and access channel to the ICWW. Monitoring reports are subsequently prepared and submitted to the Miami Dade County Department of Environmental Resource Management (DERM), Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) and US Army Corps of Engineers to satisfy permit conditions to document the relative health and recovery of the seagrass habitat within the marina and channel. Report specifics include the estimated percent coverage by seagrass, estimated target seagrass coverage (TSC), and the identification of all seagrass species and/or submerged benthic resources observed within the survey area. In addition to commonly observed seagrass species such as turtle grass (Thallasia testudinum) and paddle grass (Halophila decipiens), biologists from the Chappell Group Inc. have identified a relatively uncommon local species known as star grass (Halophila engelmanii) in recent monitoring efforts.