After Florida Drained a Wetland Biologists Found What Had Been Living Under It

As they hauled nets through shrinking bowls, the banks gave way to a wider stage—tannin‑stained flats draining toward two deeper sinks not much bigger than suburban pools. That’s when the gators came. “Predator pit,” said a veteran trapper, calm as a weatherman calling rain. A dozen alligators slid in from the shallows, then two dozen, then the water snapped with jaws and slapped with tails as if the marsh itself had turned carnivore. Overhead, wood storks spiraled down like parachutes. “Nature’s buffet,” the trapper said dryly. “And the bill comes later.”

“Watch your legs,” someone yelled.

By afternoon, the drawdown had turned voyeuristic. Beneath every step, the swamp flexed. The catfish burrows snaked back into the bank farther than anyone guessed—armored culverts crumbling into open corridors that will take a season to heal, if they heal at all. “Plants need roots. Roots need soil. Soil needs stability,” Núñez said, voice flat. “They’ve stolen the scaffold.”

Deeper in, a new kind of hole. “Not fish,” the trapper said, crouching over a den framed by slick mud and matted sawgrass. The crew traded looks that said it before anyone spoke it: pythons. Big ones. The kind that erase rabbits and raccoons and then the things that ate the rabbits and raccoons. At the third den, a coil shivered like a rope coming alive. “USGS is going to love this,” Núñez said, deadpan, then into the radio: “We’ve got vipers in the basement. Bring the bags.”

They pulled six that day—muscle and silence, a taste of the invisible census that’s gutted small mammals across vast swaths of the Glades. “They don’t just pass through,” a federal biologist said later, peeling muck from his sleeves. “They move in. They nest under your feet. You don’t see them until the water gives them up.”

On social media, the footage lit up screens in an hour. A drone shot of the predator pit racked up a million views before dinner. “Florida is wilding out,” wrote one commenter. “It’s like the Earth took off its makeup,” said another. A South Florida mom posted a clip of the armored catfish clattering in a plastic bin like fossil toys: “We’re teaching the kids about invasive species and also anxiety.”

The anxiety wasn’t just online. The mud had its own secrets. As the flats dried, a sulfur tang rose—the chemistry of a swamp adjusting, or failing to. “Phosphorus release,” said a water‑quality specialist testing a puddle the color of weak tea. “Think of it like a shaken bottle. You pop the cap, everything fizzes out.” Downstream, algal blooms can flare like a match, and when they do, fish don’t so much die as vanish—oxygen stolen from the water by invisible fire. Continue reading…