"See how this is brown?" Captain Danielle Nutten pointed to water the color of coffee in Little Sarasota Bay.
The water in Little Sarasota Bay used to be worse — even darker, and mucky at the bottom, but now, seawater is flushing it out and lightening it up, explained Nutten, owner of Salty Adventure Boat Tours in Osprey.
On a recent sunny morning, she steered her boat from the bay into the Gulf of Mexico, through an opening known as Midnight Pass.
"What you see to the right of that opening is the Siesta side, what you see to the left is Casey Key side," she shouted above the roar of the motor and splashing waves.
Boating through here is something she couldn't have done just a month ago. Midnight Pass has been closed off for decades.
"In the '60s, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, before my time, Army Corps came in and dredged the intracoastal as part of Homeland Security," said Mike Holderness, a local hotelier and the historian of the Midnight Pass Society board.
The dredging was done to protect a safe passage for American ships.
"They put the spoils from that dredging project on wet mangrove islands," he said, explaining that those wet mangrove islands became dry islands and began changing the flow of water.
"And you had more pressure coming from the south, so it unhinged the pass and pushed the pass to the north. And that's why the homeowners closed it."
Essentially, the inlet was threatening the homes of two people on the beach — so they appealed for permission and bulldozed Midnight Pass, closing it for good in 1984.
After that, the waterway became a big sand dune. You could kayak or boat up to it from the bay, and walk over a sandy hill to the Gulf, near Turtle Beach.
The homeowners were supposed to open a new inlet but were unable.
The result was bad for the ecosystem of Little Sarasota Bay, many boaters say. There was no tidal exchange, so seagrass and oyster beds died, while water temperatures rose.
"It was 14 miles of coastline with no inlet," Holderness said.
About 40% of the seagrass was lost there in recent decades, but the area remains an important breeding ground for small fish, and manatees are often seen there, according to David Tomasko, who heads the Sarasota Bay Estuary Program.
"There should be a tidal connection there," said Tomasko. "But it didn't become dead when it was lost. It became different," he added.
"As that water clarity increases, we should have sea grass growing into deeper areas. So we would anticipate that there could be a pretty substantial sea grass increase over time with that new connection," he said.
Attempts to get Midnight Pass reopened have failed, for years.
Mike Jenkins is an engineer with a company called Applied Technology and Management. He explained why, at a Sarasota county commission meeting in mid-September.
"This isn't an issue of engineering or science. It's an issue of what is allowed under the current rules in Florida. The current rules in Florida say no new inlets," Jenkins said.
Not long after this meeting, nature took care of what humans could not. Hurricane Helene blew the sand away and opened a small waterway in late September.
People came out with shovels to try to keep it open, but within days, it narrowed to a trickle. Then came Hurricane Milton, which tore Midnight Pass wide open on Oct. 9. The waterway is now about 60 feet wide at its narrowest point, according to Nutten.
"Little Sarasota Bay is already cleaning up. You have so much wildlife in there now, and the fish are coming back already. It's amazing to see," Holderness said.
Locals have been posting pictures of the snook and redfish they're catching at Midnight Pass. Hundreds of boats paraded through it in late October to celebrate.
And people who remember the area before it was closed off are reveling in the chance to see it open again, like Judy Forward, who is 82 and grew up on Siesta Key.
"I remember when it was open and my dad took my three little girls and I down there with fishing poles we got at CB’s and shrimp and we caught snook in the pass. It was very exciting. It was like hands-on fishing," Forward said as she sat on Nutten's boat and watched dolphins swim nearby.
She recalled how things changed when two wealthy men built their houses on the beach in the 1970s, leading to the eventual closing of the waterway.
"When the houses were built and they closed the pass, I was heartbroken and I think many people were because two people building at the end of Blind Pass Road took away the joy of Midnight Pass and the fish and the seashells from all of us," Forward said.
Now some boaters and environmental activists are looking for ways to keep Midnight Pass open for good.
Since these coastal inlets can shift, and close on their own, Florida Congressman Greg Steube has asked the Army Corps of Engineers if they can step in again, this time to keep it open.
In Tomasko's view, pursuing that option would go nowhere, since the environmental reasons for denying such dredging permits years ago still stand.
Rather, he thinks it should remain a wild pass, with some maintenance to keep it open.
"Everyone, take the win. This is all good. It didn't cost anything," Tomasko said.
