Old Palm Bay
Natural history

The Indian River Lagoon at Palm Bay: the 2011 blooms and after

Palm Bay lies on the central Indian River Lagoon. In 2011, while a superbloom covered the lagoon north of Eau Gallie, a second bloom of about 19,000 hectares covered the central lagoon from Eau Gallie south to Vero Beach and Fort Pierce. What the water district, the state and Brevard County record.

By The Old Palm Bay Team Updated October 13, 2026
The Indian River seen from the beach at Castaway Point Park in Palm Bay.
The Indian River Lagoon from Castaway Point Park, Palm Bay, February 2024. Pokemonprime via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 4.0.

Palm Bay sits on the central Indian River Lagoon, the 156-mile estuary that Florida Atlantic University’s Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute notes has been cited as among the most biologically diverse in North America.

Two blooms in 2011

In 2011 the lagoon had the worst blooms on record, and Palm Bay’s reach had one of its own. The St. Johns River Water Management District recorded two blooms running at the same time. The larger, which its scientists called the superbloom, covered about 53,000 hectares of the Banana River Lagoon, the southern Mosquito Lagoon and the northern Indian River as far south as Eau Gallie. The second, the “lesser” bloom, covered about 19,000 hectares of the central lagoon from Eau Gallie south to the Vero Beach and Fort Pierce area, the stretch that includes Palm Bay.

The central bloom was moderately intense, with chlorophyll readings often between 20 and 30 micrograms per liter. In the Melbourne reach it was dominated by cyanobacteria, followed by diatoms and dinoflagellates. By the end of June 2011, the district found, seagrass beds in the Banana River Lagoon and the northern and central lagoon together had shrunk about 45 percent from the summer before, a loss of roughly 31,600 acres.

A West Indian manatee in shallow water at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge.
A manatee at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, in the northern lagoon. NASA via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

The manatees

The seagrass losses eventually starved the lagoon’s manatees. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission records an Unusual Mortality Event on the Atlantic coast from December 1, 2020, to April 30, 2022, with 1,255 manatee carcasses documented, and found the cause to be starvation from a lack of forage in the Indian River Lagoon. The event was closed in March 2025 as seagrass slowly recovered in some areas.

The tax

Brevard County voters, Palm Bay’s among them, approved a half-cent sales tax on November 8, 2016, to pay for the Save Our Indian River Lagoon plan, and the county’s records show every city and town in the county signed the agreement on its use. The lagoon as a whole is covered on Old Space Coast’s lagoon page.

Volunteers carrying mats of seagrass to be planted in the Banana River.
Florida Oceanographic Society members gather seagrass mats at Kennedy Space Center for planting in the Banana River, March 29, 2023. NASA/Kim Shiflett via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

Further Reading

Sources

  1. Florida Atlantic University Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute, Indian River Lagoon facts and figures
  2. St. Johns River Water Management District, 2011 Superbloom Plan of Investigation (June 2012)
  3. Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, manatee Unusual Mortality Event on Florida's Atlantic coast
  4. Brevard County, draft ordinance renewing the Save Our Indian River Lagoon sales surtax (May 2026)

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indian river lagoon estuary algal bloom seagrass manatee ecology