Sarasota Bay

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Sarasota Bay is an estuary located off the west coast of Florida in the United States.

The bay and its surrounding area appeared on the earliest maps of the area, being named Zarazote on one dating from the early 1700s. Its natural bounty provided food for inhabitants for over ten thousand years before Europeans began exploration of the area in 1513 and later, establishing settlements along its shores.

Sarasota Bay is one of twenty-eight estuaries in the country that have been named by the U.S. Congress as an estuary of national significance. The bay lies between barrier islands called keys, that separate the body of water from the Gulf of Mexico and the Florida mainland. Longboat Key, Lido Key, Siesta Key, and Casey Key are the major keys that delineate the main bay and its smaller portions.

Since 1921, when Sarasota County was created, the bay lies in areas governed both by Manatee County and Sarasota County. From 1855 to 1921 the bay was governed by Manatee County and from 1834 to 1855 the bay was governed by Hillsborough County. Governance prior to that has been Spanish, French, English, and during the Civil War, Florida was Confederate. The concept of "governance of natural resources" did not exist among the Amerindians who harvested the bounty of Sarasota Bay for thousands of years—without diminishing it.