d in California's Channel Islands have shown that such havens give female fish time to grow, and big fat females are the key. "The number of young a fish produces is a product of its volume," Lubchenco explains. "A vermilion rockfish this big"—she spreads her hands apart 14 inches (36 centimeters)—"produces 150,000 babies. One this big"—she moves her hands apart 24 inches (61 centimeters)—"produces 1.7 million. Ten of the little girls can't produce what one of the big girls can. It's true for invertebrates as well."
But the time to act, she says, is now. "There are more bizarre things happening in the ocean than we've ever seen before," including the first known failure of the spring northerly winds to blow off the Pacific Northwest coast, in 2005. The normally predictable winds drive a nutrient-rich upwelling just offshore; without the upwelling there was no food for the phytoplankton at the base of the food chain. The result was a mass die-off of cormorants, murres, and auklets, and extremely low fish catches all the way to Point Conception, California.
The alternative no one wants to consider is another fundamental ecological principle learned in the rocky intertidal zone: altered stable states. "That's when you tweak a system to such an extent it may not recover," says Lubchenco, leading to more harmful algal blooms, more dead zones, more fisheries collapse, more invasive species, and, oddly enough, massive blooms of jellyfish.
III. THE BIG DEVELOPER
In which Florida's largest private landholder decides to grow boomer communities instead of pine trees along a vast swath of the Panhandle
The first baby boomers turned 60 last January, the cutting edge of what will soon be the wealthiest, healthiest, and largest group of retirees the nation has ever seen, some 78 million strong. Imagine a tidal wave of fit, tanned, sixtysomethings crashing on the nation's shores every year.
That suits Peter Rummell just fine. The former real estate guru for Disney now calls the shots at the St. Joe Company, Florida's former paper-and-timber giant that he has transformed into one of the largest coastal developers in the nation. Rummell beat the boomers to the big 6-0 by a couple of months. Tanned, fit, and with a wreath of short-cropped gray hair, he could be George C. Scott's laid-back younger brother. "We think there are enormous numbers of people getting to my age who have flexibility in their lifestyles," Rummell says. "They're not staying in Cincinnati 12 months of the year. They're looking for warmer climates, particularly Florida. It's a proven track record for 75 years."
In fact, quips Jerry Ray, St. Joe's VP for corporate communications, the entire state of Pennsylvania—that's 12 million people—will be moving to Florida in the next 25 years, according to census projections. To meet that demand, Rummell and his team are turning vast tracts of pines into tony resort developments, aimed at feeding the hearts and minds of wealthy, nature-loving second-home buyers.
So how do you squeeze all those people into a backwater chunk of Florida, once dubbed "the forgotten coast," without destroying the natural beauty that draws people to the area in the first place? The trick is planning, Rummell says, master planning, to be exact. At their showplace resort of WaterColor, about 40 miles west of Panama City, Jerry Ray proudly pointed out how far back the houses and the trademark WaterColor Inn—which looks like a large, tastefully done lifeguard station—are set behind the sugary dunes. Natural areas full of native Florida species, such as sand pines, saw palmettos, and sweet bay magnolias, are laced with hiking and biking trails that sweep around a natural coastal lake, forming a buffer zone. The houses, built like quaint bomb shelters, are designed in what the company calls Cracker Modern, or where redneck Florida meets rich, tasteful Nantucket. While it's more spread out than the groundbreaking New Urbanism development of Seaside—the idyllic backdrop for The Truman Show just next door—many of the concepts are the same: Make it walkable with 