Florida Governor Rick Scott has declared a state of emergency as a toxic red tide has killed fish and marine life, disrupted boating and tourism and has sickened residents with respiratory problems. The growing bloom of toxic algae, which started last October, has darkened waters in the Gulf of Mexico and strewn beaches with dead fish, eels, porpoises, turtles, manatees and even a 26-foot whale shark. The state of emergency exists in seven counties from Tampa Bay south to the edge of the Everglades; the governor has promised $1.5 million in emergency funding.
The red tide season usually lasts from October to February, but this year it has been killing massive amounts of fish and marine life for almost ten months. The red tide and algae bloom have been clogging rivers and canals and leaving a green scum floating on the surface of Lake Okeechobee.
Sea turtles have been hit particularly hard by the toxic tide; some 300 have died already. And research shows that a lethal concentration of algae has moved offshore. “There’s no fish left,” Rich Bartleson, a research scientist at the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation told The Washington Post. “Red tide killed them all.”
Red tides have been increasing in Florida since the 1950s, but now they’re getting worse. Climate change is one factor. Warmer waters are receptive to algae growth, and water surface temperatures in the Gulf have warmed by two degrees since 1977.
But population growth, housing developments and agricultural waste are also culprits. As housing developments have built into wetlands, water that used to settle there now rushes into rivers and the Gulf, loaded with agricultural nutrients, such as nitrogen and phosphorus, that feed the algae. And after last fall’s storms flooded the area with water, the Army Corps of Engineers had to release nutrient-full water from Lake Okeechobee to keep it from spilling over old and weak dikes.
Meanwhile, people are suffering. “I can’t even let my cats out on the lanai,” Amy Ernst, a Sarasota printmaker told The Post. “Eyes burning, throat burning, sinus problems.”
