University of Florida President Kent Fuchs spent his Sunday riding around Cedar Key in an airboat for the first time, visiting a Native American burial ground, climbing a lighthouse and exploring the area's clam farms.
The president’s daylong visit was another testament to his interest in the university's ventures across all disciplines, said Jack Payne, the senior vice president of agriculture and science at UF.
“I was thrilled that the president came down today,” said Payne, who lives in Cedar Key. “The fact that he would spend a Sunday with us, all day, speaks volumes about his interest in all aspects of the university.”
Fuchs, who had never been to Cedar Key, spent Sunday exploring the Gulf Coast city that is home to numerous UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences projects and archaeological research sites.
He was given an airboat tour of archaeological sites, followed by a boat trip to see clam farms, Snake Island and Seahorse Key, where he climbed to the top of the Cedar Key Lighthouse.
Fuchs said he was fascinated by the history of the area at the unique archaeological sites.
“Understanding the history of Florida over 2,000 years and how that relates to the present, there might be lessons there for us to learn about how communities can interact with the environment and thrive in the midst of a changing environment," Fuchs said.
The group visited archaeological sites including Shell Mound, Raleigh Island, Richards Island and McClamory Key, some of the locations where UF anthropology professor and archaeologist Ken Sassaman works. Sassaman uses these sites to find information about how Native Americans dealt with rising sea levels.
“They were pretty agile,” he said. “They basically abandoned locations and reestablished other settlements landward where it was safer and higher.”
The sites, which he showed Fuchs, help archaeologists understand potential ways to deal with sea level rise in the future, especially in places like Miami, Sassaman said.
“We want to see this in real time, this process of this being transformed from land to water, to know that that’s what the [Native Americans] experienced and how they dealt with the changes in ecology and the livability of the place,” he said.
Leslie Sturmer, a UF IFAS extension agent, works with the molluscan shellfish industry in Cedar Key. Sturmer showed Fuchs the acres of clam farms in the water near Cedar Key, which she says produces 90 percent of the clams in Florida.
The university helped fishermen transition to clam farming after legislation in 1995 changed the landscape of the Florida fishing industry.
“This area being the most significant area for clam production in all of Florida and it was developed by University of Florida faculty,” Fuchs said.
The president also visited the Gulf Side Motel, which will soon be the location for the new Nature Coast Biological Station. In part, the station will be an educational hub for students, where they can perform research alongside professors and researchers. Construction for the station starts Tuesday and is expected to finish in about 10 months, Payne said.
Cedar Key is a center for research on the Nature Coast of Florida, which extends across eight Florida counties.
“We especially work along the Nature Coast,” Payne said. “It’s the only undeveloped coast left in Florida. It’s a great living laboratory that we use to study how things work and we’d like to keep in pristine.”