Ask 1stFlorida
The Indian River Lagoon is a 156-mile-long estuary on Florida's east coast, bordered by six counties from Volusia County south to Palm Beach County.
The six counties are Volusia, Brevard, Indian River, St. Lucie, Martin and northern Palm Beach. The lagoon is made up of three bodies of water: Mosquito Lagoon, the Banana River and the Indian River. Water moves between the lagoon and the Atlantic Ocean through five ocean inlets, and a sixth connection at Port Canaveral is limited by navigation locks. The lagoon is shallow, with an average depth of 4 feet.
The lagoon's watershed holds more than 2,100 kinds of plants and more than 2,200 kinds of animals, including some 700 kinds of fish. It is one of 28 estuaries in the country named an Estuary of National Significance.
Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge is in the north-central part of the lagoon, and Canaveral National Seashore is on the southern part of Mosquito Lagoon. The safety and security needs of Kennedy Space Center required more than 140,000 acres of beaches, dunes and wetlands, and the refuge and the seashore were created in the 1960s and 1970s to manage that land.
The Indian River Lagoon National Estuary Program works on the lagoon's health as a program under Section 320 of the federal Clean Water Act. It began in 1991, and it writes and carries out a 10-year plan for the lagoon, called the Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan. The program names nutrient pollution as a primary cause of the harmful algae blooms in the lagoon from 2011 to 2020. Its website is onelagoon.org.
Manatees cannot survive long in water below about sixty-eight degrees, so from November to March they crowd into the springs and the warm-water outflows, and that is when you see them in numbers.
Read the answer →Merritt Island is in Brevard County, and its land north and west of Cape Canaveral holds NASA's Kennedy Space Center and a national wildlife refuge.
Read the answer →On the Space Coast. The Indian River Lagoon in Brevard County, which takes in the Indian River, the Banana River and Mosquito Lagoon, is where people go to see the water light up blue-green when a paddle or a fish stirs it.
Read the answer →Population 632,780. Typical home sale price $368,859 in the three months ending June 2026; typical condo $229,000 in May 2026. Median household income $78,476; 24.5% of residents are 65 or older. (Source: Redfin; U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey, published January 2026)
Open the county guide →Population 166,936. Typical home sale price $373,945 in the three months ending June 2026; typical condo $145,000 in May 2026. Median household income $73,491; 34.8% of residents are 65 or older. (Source: Redfin; U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey, published January 2026)
Open the county guide →Merritt Island is in Brevard County, and its land north and west of Cape Canaveral holds NASA's Kennedy Space Center and a national wildlife refuge.
Any beach on the Gulf coast faces west, so the sun goes down into the water the length of that shore.
The whole Atlantic coast, from Amelia Island down to Key Biscayne. The ones worth setting an alarm for are the undeveloped stretches, where nothing stands between the dune and the horizon.
Have a different question? Ask 1stFlorida →