Tampa Bay Watershed Location

Tampa Bay is the largest open-water estuary in Florida, encompassing nearly 400 square miles and bordering three counties - Hillsborough, Manatee, and Pinellas. At 2,200 square miles, its watershed is more than five times larger than the bay itself.

More than 100 tributaries, including 4 major rivers - the Hillsborough, Alafia, Manatee, and Little Manatee, and more than 40 meandering, brackish creeks and coastal streams flow into the bay. Tampa Bay contains more than 200 fish species, including popular species such as snook, redfish, and spotted sea trout. The bay’s mangrove-blanketed islands support the most diverse colonial waterbird nesting colonies in North America, annually hosting 40,000 pairs of 25 different species, ranging from the familiar white ibis and great blue heron to the reddish egret—the rarest heron in the nation.

Tampa Bay averages only about 12 feet in depth. Because it is so shallow, channels have been dredged to allow large ships safe passage to the Port of Tampa and other bay harbors. The largest of these, the main shipping channel, is 43 feet deep and 40 miles long. The Port of Tampa, Florida’s largest port, consistently ranks among the top 10 ports nationwide in tonnage and contributes billions annually to the region’s economy. More than 4 billion gallons of oil, fertilizer products, and other potentially hazardous materials pass through Tampa Bay each year.

The Tampa Bay watershed encompasses diverse human activities. It contains some of the state’s most productive agricultural lands. Other significant components of the region’s economy include phosphate and other mining, industry and power generation, and tourism and recreation.

Tampa, the region’s largest city in size and population, lies directly north of Tampa Bay in Hillsborough County. Other population centers include the cities of Clearwater, Largo, and St. Petersburg west of Tampa Bay in Pinellas County, and Bradenton at the south end of Tampa Bay in Manatee County.

In 1995, the Greater Tampa Bay region contained about 3.6 million people, concentrated in the Tampa Bay metropolitan area. The population is expected to grow to about 4.6 million permanent residents by 2010, with the largest increase projected in the developed areas surrounding Tampa Bay (Hillsborough, Pasco, Manatee, and Pinellas Counties).