Biscayne Bay

Biscayne Bay is a shallow lagoon with estuary characteristics along the Atlantic shore of southern Florida, about thirty-five miles long and eight miles wide, averaging under two metres in depth. A chain of barrier islands, shoals and the northern Florida Keys shelters most of its water from the open ocean. Fresh water enters from the western shore through rivers and groundwater, while the eastern rim lies on an old coral reef.

Juan Ponce de León called these waters Chequescha in 1513, and Pedro Menéndez de Avilés used Tequesta in 1565, both names for the people living around the lagoon. A seventeenth-century map records the name Cayo de Biscainhos, from which the name Biscayne may derive. The southern waters, sheltered from the open sea, held broad mangrove, seagrass and coral-rock habitats.