Pine Island Sound is located in Lee County, Florida

Lee County, Florida

Lee County is a county located in the U.S. state of Florida. Located in southwest Florida, the principal cities in the county are Fort Myers and Cape Coral...

, lying between Pine Island (Lee County, Florida)

Pine Island (Lee County, Florida)

Pine Island is an island located in Lee County, Florida, on the Gulf coast of southwest Florida. It is the largest island in the state of Florida, and the 118th largest island in the United States. The Intracoastal Waterway passes through Pine Island Sound, to the west of the island. Matlacha Pass...

 and the barrier islands

Bar (landform)

A shoal, sandbar , or gravelbar is a somewhat linear landform within or extending into a body of water, typically composed of sand, silt or small pebbles. A spit or sandspit is a type of shoal...

 of Sanibel Island

Sanibel Island

Sanibel Island is an island located on the Gulf coast of Florida, just offshore of Fort Myers. In 2000, it had an estimated population of 6,064 people...

, Captiva Island

Captiva Island

Captiva Island is an island in Lee County in southwest Florida, located just offshore in the Gulf of Mexico.-History:According to local folklore, Captiva got its name because the pirate captain José Gaspar held his female prisoners on the island for ransom or worse...

, North Captiva Island

North Captiva Island

North Captiva Island is an island in Lee County in Southwest Florida, located just offshore in the Gulf of Mexico. It lies just north of Captiva Island, separated by a channel called Redfish Pass which was created in a 1921 hurricane...

 and Cayo Costa

Cayo Costa State Park

Cayo Costa State Park is a Florida State Park on La Costa Island, which is directly south of Boca Grande, Florida, west of Cape Coral and just north of Sanibel and Captiva Islands...

, which separate the Sound from the Gulf of Mexico

Gulf of Mexico

The Gulf of Mexico is a partially landlocked ocean basin largely surrounded by the North American continent and the island of Cuba. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United States, on the southwest and south by Mexico, and on the southeast by Cuba. In...

. The Sound connects to Gasparilla Sound and Charlotte Harbor

Charlotte Harbor (estuary)

Charlotte Harbor Estuary is a natural estuary spanning the west coast of Florida from Venice to Bonita Springs on the Gulf of Mexico and is one of the most productive wetlands in Florida...

 to the north, and to San Carlos Bay

San Carlos Bay (Florida)

San Carlos Bay is a bay located southwest of Fort Myers, Florida, at the mouth of the Caloosahatchee River. It connects to Pine Island Sound to the west and to Matlacha Pass to the north....

 and the Caloosahatchee River

Caloosahatchee River

The Caloosahatchee River is a river on the southwest Gulf Coast of Florida in the United States, approximately long. It drains rural areas on the northern edge of the Everglades northwest of Miami...

 to the south. The Sound is conterminous with the Pine Island Sound Aquatic Preserve, which was established in 1970 and consists of 54,000 acre

Acre

The acre is a unit of area in a number of different systems, including the imperial and U.S. customary systems. The most commonly used acres today are the international acre and, in the United States, the survey acre. The most common use of the acre is to measure tracts of land.The acre is related...

s (220 km²) of submerged land. Important habitats in the Sound include mangroves

Florida mangroves

The Florida mangroves comprise an ecosystem of the coasts of the Florida peninsula, including the Florida Keys. The Florida mangrove community includes three mangrove species, Red Mangrove , Black Mangrove and White Mangrove , and one species that is variously classified as a mangrove or a...

, seagrass

Seagrass

Seagrasses are flowering plants from one of four plant families , all in the order Alismatales , which grow in marine, fully saline environments.-Ecology:...

es, salt marsh

Salt marsh

A salt marsh is an environment in the upper coastal intertidal zone between land and salt water or brackish water, it is dominated by dense stands of halophytic plants such as herbs, grasses, or low shrubs. These plants are terrestrial in origin and are essential to the stability of the salt marsh...

es, oyster

Oyster

The word oyster is used as a common name for a number of distinct groups of bivalve molluscs which live in marine or brackish habitats. The valves are highly calcified....

 communities and tidal flats

Mudflat

Mudflats or mud flats, also known as tidal flats, are coastal wetlands that form when mud is deposited by tides or rivers. They are found in sheltered areas such as bays, bayous, lagoons, and estuaries. Mudflats may be viewed geologically as exposed layers of bay mud, resulting from deposition of...

.

For thousands of years, the sound was home to the Calusa

Calusa

The Calusa were a Native American people who lived on the coast and along the inner waterways of Florida's southwest coast. Calusa society developed from that of archaic peoples of the Everglades region; at the time of European contact, the Calusa were the people of the Caloosahatchee culture...

 Indians and their ancestors. In the 18th and 19th centuries it was an important winter fishery for the Cuba

Cuba

The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...

n mullet

Mullet (fish)

The mullets or grey mullets are a family and order of ray-finned fish found worldwide in coastal temperate and tropical waters, and in some species in fresh water. Mullets have served as an important source of food in Mediterranean Europe since Roman times...

 fleet. In the early 1960s, in preparation for the Bay of Pigs Invasion

Bay of Pigs Invasion

The Bay of Pigs Invasion was an unsuccessful action by a CIA-trained force of Cuban exiles to invade southern Cuba, with support and encouragement from the US government, in an attempt to overthrow the Cuban government of Fidel Castro. The invasion was launched in April 1961, less than three months...

, the CIA trained some Cuban exiles on Useppa Island

Useppa Island

Useppa Island is a barrier island located in Lee County, Florida. It has been known for luxury resorts since the late 19th century, and it is currently the home of the private Useppa Island Club. On May 21, 1996, it was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places, due to its...

, located in the center of the sound.