Here’s a front‑row seat to the kind of Florida story that starts with sunshine and ends with your jaw on the floor. When crews lowered the water in a quiet fringe of the Everglades this fall, the plan was routine—maintenance drawdown, a little data, maybe a few stranded bass. Instead, the ground cracked like old china, the mud breathed, and a hidden city came to life.
“Get your waders,” a field tech muttered as the first pool shrank to the size of a kiddie tub. “You’ll want to see this.” Within minutes, the puddle seethed—bluegill by the hundreds, juvenile gar, a couple of panicked largemouth, and then the armored ones. “Plecos. Everywhere,” said biologist Carla Núñez, pinching the bridge of her nose as bony-plated catfish surfaced like helmeted antiques. “They’re in the banks too. Look.” She pointed to the shoreline pocked with holes—mud walls riddled with tunnels like a termite palace, the edges collapsing as more fish wriggled in reverse into the dark.
They call it the sudden reveal—when the water retreats and the swamp tells the truth. Fish jammed shoulder to shoulder in flickering circles. Burrows opening like trapdoors. A smell that rolls over you in hot waves—algae, rot, the metallic bite of oxygen dropping to nothing. “We’ve got thirty minutes before this goes hypoxic,” Núñez barked, already elbow‑deep in a mesh tote. “Air breathers will hold. Natives won’t.”
The armored catfish gulped at the surface, unbothered, sucking air as if the emergency had nothing to do with them. A young tech, new to this, frowned at the holes lace‑stitching the bank. “How many?” he asked. Núñez didn’t look up. “More than we counted. More than we thought we’d ever have to.” Continue reading…
