The Lee County Human Trafficking Task Force met with Florida Gulf Coast University officials Thursday to further their goal of creating a center for combating human trafficking on campus. WGCU’s Amy Tardif reports.

Nearly half the National Hurricane Center's employees urge the federal government to replace their boss. But Director Bill Proenza says he will not resign and his superiors have reassured him that he still has his job. WGCU’s Amy Tardif has more.

Mote Marine Laboratory scientists are studying bull sharks in the Caloosahatchee River to determine if they’ve been exposed to human drugs. If the drugs interfere with their ability to reproduce, it could eventually devastate the species, which already faces numerous threats from humans and has been in a steep population decline since the 1970s. WGCU’s Amy Tardif has more.

The woman who founded Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota celebrated her 85th birthday in a big way Friday night. Dr. Eugenie Clark has inspired countless young women to follow her lead making landmark contributions to marine science for the past 50 years. And she used the party at Mote as a send-off – she’s headed back to New Guinea Monday for yet another exploration. WGCU’s Amy Tardif reports.

There were ceremonies around Florida Wednesday recognizing National Crime Victims’ Rights Week. WGCU’s Amy Tardif attended an event in Lee County and prepared this report.

Marine life artist Wyland, who has painted 94 mammoth "Whaling Wall" murals around the world to promote ocean conservation, dedicated his final U.S. wall painting Monday in the Florida Keys.

Wyland’s newest mural is a panoramic 7,500-square-foot representation of the living coral reef that parallels the Keys. It wraps around a four-story, four-sided building in the median of the Overseas Highway.

Wyland has spent more than 20 years diving in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. He credits the Keys reef, the only contiguous coral expanse in North America, for inspiring his work.

“So I take all that inspiration that I see when I’m diving in the Florida Keys in this case. I take all that beauty and I simply paint it up on a wall for people to enjoy. This is a mural that is really the gateway to the Florida Keys”

Like Wyland's previous walls, the Key Largo mural is designed to motivate environmental awareness and stewardship, particularly in children.

Wyland, who began painting such "Whaling Walls" in 1981, plans to continue his series internationally until he has completed 100 murals. This one was his last planned for the United States.

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Marine life artist Wyland dedicated his final U.S. wall painting Monday in the Florida Keys. It’s his 95th such mural.

The panoramic 7,500-square-foot representation of the living coral reef that parallels the Keys features islands, manatees, manta rays, assorted indigenous fish and bottlenose dolphins. Wyland says he means to motivate.

“Art is something that can touch people’s emotion. And you can choose not to go into a gallery or a museum but you can’t ignore a giant mural like this. It demands attention. And if people see this beauty I know they’ll want to get involved in protecting it. It’s really the first step to conservation.”

During breaks from painting this month, Wyland painted separate canvases with kids, hoping to inspire youngsters to preserve the world’s oceans.

He intends to paint his last huge artwork, more than two miles long, in Beijing, with the help of children from around the world, prior to the 2008 summer Olympics.

The Florida Gulf Coast University Board of Trustees voted to give former President Dr. Bill Merwin nearly 400 thousand dollars Wednesday to end his contract with the school.

The usual break in mail delivery and post office service will be extended because of a national holiday and a national day of mourning -- causing an unusual, three-day pause in the U.S. Postal Service's operations.

Monday was New Year's Day, a holiday observed by the Postal Service and most other employers. A funeral in Washington, D.C., for former President Gerald Ford will be today. President George Bush ordered all government agencies not essential for national security to be closed today. Add Sunday and that leaves three days with no mail. This has the Postal Service hoping for the best, says U.S. Postal Service customer relations rep for Fort Myers and Cape Coral, Debra Mitchell.

“Our processing center, that’s 24-7, I mean that never shuts down so anytime we have a holiday the delivery end of it has to play catch up. So obviously normally you’re catching up on a lot of times Sunday, Monday – because they’re still processing mail on Sundays – and so now we’re going to have Sunday, Monday, Tuesday to catch up on.”

Mitchell says on Wednesday the carriers will take out all of the first class mail first and the advertising mail will have to catch up on Thursday.

Sanibel poet Joe Pacheco has spent some time observing what happens to his barrier island as the holidays take over. He wrote a new poem about it and called it “The Night Before Christmas on Sanibel Isle”.

Lee County Commissioners have approved the purchase of a 126-acre island in Charlotte Harbor through the Conservation 20/20 program.

The 2.5-million dollar purchase is for a portion of Cayo Pelau Island which is in Lee County near Gasparilla Sound. The island consists of about 116 acres of wetland mangroves and 10 acres of uplands. Cayo Pelau contains a large diversity of native plant communities, including rare tropical hardwood hammocks and three beaches. And the island has long been associated with tales of buried pirate treasure. The President of the Calusa Land Trust and Nature Preserve of Pine Island, Bud House, says the purchase is important environmentally and archaeologically.

“Pristine archaeologically significant large scale maritime properties such as Cayo Pelau become available for acquisition just once in a blue moon. We are fortunate to have willing sellers and a conservation minded real estate agent who brought the property to the attention of the Lee County 2020 staff for all the right reasons.”

The island was home to prehistoric Native Americans, Cuban fishermen, and Columbus B. McCloud, a 19th century Audubon warden. House’s group has pledge 20,000 dollars toward the purchase. Closing is expected to occur within 90 days.

Lee County’s Conservation 20/20 Program is funded through a property tax of 50 cents for every 1,000 dollars of taxable property value. The program generates 43 million annually and has purchased nearly 18,000 acres so far.