Pine Island Sound is located in Lee County, Florida, lying between Pine Island (Lee County, Florida) and the barrier islands of Sanibel Island, Captiva Island, North Captiva Island and Cayo Costa, which separate the Sound from the Gulf of Mexico. The Sound connects to Gasparilla Sound and Charlotte Harbor to the north, and to San Carlos Bay and the Caloosahatchee River to the south. The Sound is conterminous with the Pine Island Sound Aquatic Preserve, which was established in 1970 and consists of 54,000 acres (220 km2) of submerged land. Important habitats in the Sound include mangroves, seagrasses, salt marshes, oyster communities and tidal flats.
For thousands of years, the sound was home to the Calusa Indians and their ancestors. In the 18th and 19th centuries it was an important winter fishery for the Cuban mullet fleet. In the early 1960s, in preparation for the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the CIA trained some Cuban exiles on Useppa Island, located in the center of the sound.
Famous quotes containing the words pine, island and/or sound:
“In the atom’s fizz and pop we heard possibility
uncorked. Taffeta wraps whispered on davenports.
A new planet bloomed above us; in its light
the stumps of cut pine gleamed like dinner plates.
The world was beginning all over again, fresh and hot;
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—Lynn Emanuel (b. 1949)
“They all came, some wore sentiments
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Through branches of Norfolk Island pine as though
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—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Aegaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.”
—Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)