CITRUS COUNTY, Fla. — King’s Bay is a staple in Citrus County, thousands make the drive each year for the different water activities and for the manatees.

“This area is a huge winter refuge for them when they come into these springs and stay warm for the winter so that they can survive the colder temperatures,” Dr. Michelle Sivilich said. When algae shows up on the surface, though, no one finds it exciting, she added.

Sivilich, the executive director of the Kings Bay River restoration project, is staying on top of the big project that he hopes will bring the bay back to it’s former glory. 

“King’s Bay has been suffering from an invasion of Lyngbya," she said. "It’s this filamentous blue-green algae that kind of float in on the tide, they fall to the bottom and they make these big spires of yucky looking smelly stuff that nobody likes.” 

Sivilich said they are not dangerous though, just not good for the bay.

The restoration project focuses on removing all of those algae as part of a three-phase plan: remove, restore, maintain.

The remove phase made possible with great help from divers.

“These divers are coming through with this big underwater vacuum basically,” she said. 

All that muck they collect goes into big mechanical separators and in return, clear water gets pumped back into the bay.

“We’re returning water back to the Bay that’s even cleaner than what we took out,” so that the replanting phase can begin, Sivilich  said.

“We put our plants in these cages and that prevents the manatees from just coming right over and pulling them back out again, so it grows by sending out runners and it also flowers and makes seeds  and makes new plants that way too,” she said.

The result is healthy grass and vegetation for sea creatures and a pleasant bay for everyone to enjoy.

The almost $22 million project is far from completion.

More than 40 acres of the bay is completed, but Sivilich said they would need another $20 million to have the entire bay restored by its centennial in July 2023.