Welcome to Our Water World
| by Michael Salerno and Daily Sun
The Center for the Blue Economy’s National Ocean Economics Program data cited in this article about how, despite hurricanes, red tides, and pollution, people just keep coming to Florida’s beaches.
Head for the coast, and on a good weekend, thousands of people are at the shore, enjoying the sun, water and sugar-white sands.
Beaches are the original Florida — the lure that drew Northerners to a swampy peninsula decades before Walt Disney’s company decided to make the Sunshine State home.
Today, these original tourist attractions generate billions of dollars for the state economy and support nearly 400,000 jobs. Their salt-air allure is part of the foundation of modern Florida.
Tourism and recreation in the state’s coastal counties — not limited to, but including beaches — contributed more than $16 billion to Florida’s gross domestic product in 2011, 2012, and 2015, according to the most recent research available from the National Ocean Economics Program, which monitors the ocean economies of the U.S.