Kayaking along Weedon Island Preserve - Official Travel Site for the St. Petersburg & Clearwater Area America's #1 Beach


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One of the great benefits of a vacation to Florida’s Beach is that the area is so diverse it can end up as multiple vacations rolled into one. Go the beach and see a show; attend museums and go to sporting events. Get an urban fix and experience nature.

A fantastic way to experience nature is to go kayaking at close-but-oh-so-far-away Weedon Island, perhaps 15 minutes from downtown St. Petersburg.

“The thing that I like about it is, here it is, nestled in on the northeast side of St. Petersburg, and once you’re out there and in the trail, you could be in the middle of the Everglades, that’s how it feels,” said Russell Farrow, a co-owner of Sweetwater Kayaks with Jean Totz and Nigel Foster.

“It’s a wilderness experience in your backyard – literally.”

Farrow knows from experience. He has paddled and taught the world over, so he knows what the Everglades are like.

“If [visitors] want to know what it is like to be in the Everglades – without the alligators and crocodiles, because it’s salt water – that’s what it’s like,” Farrow said.

Weedon Island makes up for the lack of those toothy reptiles with plenty of other plant and animal life. There are mangroves everywhere, and swimming nearby and soaring to and fro are are manatees, dolphins, ospreys, hawks and numerous other bird species. There also are many types of

fish in part thanks to the improvement in water quality that has taken place over the last 20-plus years.

“The quality of water in the bay is so improved over what we had here in the ’70s and even the mid-’80s,” Farrow said. “You could never paddle out there and have clear water when it cools down.”

When Bay Area waters are warm, blooms in the water turn it a little murky. Although it doesn’t have the clarity, it’s actually a very healthy environment. Roseate spoonbills, because they are sifters, are the first creatures that are going to leave and the last that will come back.

There are a couple of flocks of them now working area waters.

“It’s a great environment when you see as many redfish and adolescent tarpon and trout,” Farrow said.

Each season has its own special draw. In the summer, manatees are in the deeper water, and in the winter they’re in the warmer water, in the shallows, on the north side by the power plant.

At different times of year, there will be tarpon and redfish inshore. In the fall through the early spring, there are bald eagles that live on Weedon Island. Year-round there are ospreys.

“There are red-shouldered hawks that I see out there fairly frequently, so I think they live there,” Farrow said.

“The mangroves

in this area in particular are really healthy and the mangroves are kind of like the nursery for all the life in the Gulf [of Mexico]. So all the small fish, all the baby fish, baby birds, it all starts there. So the adolescents go back there and try to feed of them, then the adults come back there and try to feed off of them.”

The awe factor at Weedon is not displayed only in larger life forms.

“It’s not on a grandiose scale like going to the Tetons, where you look at it and you go, ‘Oh, wow, look how big that is, look how amazing that is.’ It’s on a minute scale,” Farrow said. “When the tide goes out, if you pick a square foot of ground, there are all kinds of life in it. It’s crazy. There’s stuff everywhere, shellfish, worms, crabs, all kinds of stuff.”

Attribute that to the fact that Weedon Island is not a park; it’s a preserve, which means it is there to preserve the area for the wildlife.

“They want people coming through, but they don’t want a billion people there,” Farrow said.

Weedon Island is fairly tidally dependent, so when it’s low tide, it’s not a good time to go paddling out there.

“If people are interested in going, they can simply call the shop, we can tell them what the tide looks like the day they choose to go and we can get them squared away,” Farrow said.

If you go: Sweetwater Kayaks is located at 10000 Gandy Blvd. in St. Petersburg. Visit www.sweetwaterkayaks.com or call (727) 570-4844. Register for an e-mail newsletter at the website. Visit www.weedonislandcenter.org for more information on the Weedon Island Preserve Cultural and Natural History Center or call (727) 453-6500.