WATER QUALITY REPORT FOR JAN. 24, 2024
Before I cared about journalism, I cared about tarpon.
I was 15 years old and didn’t know about red tide or blue-green algae. Never heard of flesh-eating bacteria in brackish water or harmful algae in freshwater.
Saltwater had all my attention because the great expanse of the greater Gulf of Mexico is the heart of the North American population of the great Megalops atlanticus. The Silver King. The poon. Tarpum. Sabalo.
I had tarpon fever, which can last all summer. The only cure is to catch one.
The same afternoon that school ended for the summer, a young and little me and a bunch of other 15-year-old misfits would swarm the end of the Big Indian Rocks Fishing Pier, each setting up a tri-fold beach chair to use as a bed and laying claim to our spot for the next ten weeks of tarpon season off Indian Rocks Beach in Pinellas County. Everyone called us pier rats because we were always scurrying around.
Using PVC pipe, ropes, and some acquired skills, we’d tie our heavy rigs to the rail, and they would stay there, unbelievably secure. Most of us built our own rods during the winter with professional rod-building parts; I’m still pretty good at it. But everybody had the same reel: A Penn Special Senator 113H2 with 300 yards of 30-pound test. It was the poor man’s gold standard.
We lived out there, at the end of the pier, about 1,000 feet from the beach and some 15 feet above the water, for weeks. If you never came off the pier during the day when some guy was in the booth where you had to pay, you didn’t have to fork anything over to get back on.
Perhaps once a week we’d go home for the night to eat something not from a vending machine, grab more aloe for sunburns, sleep in air conditioning, and convince Mom or Dad to part with as much money as possible.
By daybreak, we’d be back at it.
Every few hours some tarpon would swim through. You didn’t even need to see them to know. The dozens of poles lashed to the railing perhaps a foot apart would tell us.
Tarpon seem to always be swimming from the south to the north, and since everyone used live fish as bait, and the little fish were underwater with the big tarpon, the bait fish would see the silversides, spook, and in a futile bid to hide somewhere, pull down each pole ever so little.
It looked sort of like the Lollipop Kids singing snippets in The Wizard of Oz, popping up and jiggling for a few seconds in an orchestrated south-to-north line.
Bing. Bing. Bing. …. Bing. Bing …. Bing. Bing. Bing ….
We would all fall silent, hoping one of the rods – our own, of course -- would double over and the Penn Special Senator 113H2 with 300 yards of 30-pound test would start screaming out line -- fish on!
Those were the fond summers of my youth. And while I wasn't thinking about the environment or journalism then, those months every year are a big part of why I do what I do now. Every day, I paid attention to the Gulf of Mexico and the creatures in it. I still do.
I cannot remember seeing, smelling, or hearing of red tide, much less blue-green algae. However, there were blooms happening: a 12-month-long bloom way before my time from 1959 to 1960. An incredible, I know now, a 30-month-long red tide bloom from 1994 to 1997 – way after my days as a pier rat.
This week – this month, these past two years – harmful algae blooms are a topic of news nearly weekly. Red tide has been around as long as time, but we are making small blooms grow bigger, and last longer than they did before we all started living along the coasts and allowing the nutrients we don’t want – excess fertilizer, pieces of food, garbage, yard waste, street debris, and on and on – to wash into the water to become available for the microscopic things that grow to stink and leave dead fish all over the shoreline and drive us away from the beaches and lakes we moved here to enjoy.
I started thinking about tarpon and red tide years later when I was covering one of my first red tide outbreaks in Pinellas County. Several big tarpons had washed up on the beach with all the smaller dead fish. It amazed me to think a 100-pound fish could succumb to the toxins in an alga. Or that blooms can deplete the oxygen from an area of water so large that such a fast swimmer couldn’t escape the dead zone.
By the way, I finally caught a tarpon one summer and won first place during the weekly rounds of the Suncoast Tarpon Roundup. I beat the guy who had been in first place all week by one pound with less than a day to go. We knew each other. He wasn’t happy with me.
Soon after, in the early 1980s, the pier blew down in a hurricane. I was on it the day prior, still fishing as the storm moved closer. When the first wave washed in that was higher than the pier – 15-plus feet – it rolled up through the planks all the way to shore. The wave left a few planks sticking up and took a few with it. I knew what was coming. I ran barefoot down the length of the pier with my Penn Special Senator 113HS on my custom fishing rod and my pink, tri-fold cot atop a wheeled cart full of fishing gear.
When Hurricane Elana was gone several days later - she did a loopy-loop right out in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico - so was the Big Indian Rocks Fishing Pier.
College started soon after. I started thinking more about journalism than tarpon and, usually, I still do.
We now present WGCU’s Water Quality Report with no commercial interruptions.
RED TIDE
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission found the red tide organism, Karenia brevis, in 98 samples collected from Florida’s Gulf Coast during the last week, which is the highest amount of positive tests in more than a month.
In Southwest Florida, K. brevis was observed at high concentrations in Sarasota and Charlotte counties, and in medium concentrations in and offshore of Lee, Collier, and Monroe counties.
In Southwest Florida, K. brevis was observed at medium-to-high concentrations, and a bloom is building off Sanibel Island heading toward offshore of Naples
The Clinic for the Rehabilitation of Wildlife in Sanibel Island admitted four sea birds with suspected red tide/toxicosis. A juvenile double-crested cormorant and an adult brown pelican are still in care, but an adult royal tern didn’t make it.
The Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation found fish kills suspected to be related to red tide on Sanibel Island. Two sea turtles, a loggerhead and a green, were found dead, as were about a dozen mullets and multiple species of crabs.
Even away from Sanibel, respiratory Irritation suspected to be related to red tide was reported in Sarasota, Lee, Collier, and Monroe counties.
BLUE-GREEN ALGAE
Lake Avalon, the popular sports recreation lake in Collier County, has been closed due to a severe blue-green algae outbreak since November 15 — and is going to stay that way as there is no indication from health officials that it will re-open anytime soon.
The Lee County Environmental Lab found elements of blue-green algae at the Davis Boat Ramp about 30 miles from the red tide in the Gulf of Mexico off Lee County.
Seven tests on various parts of Lake Okeechobee in early January found no traces of blue-green algae, but that might be because the massive water dump of the past seven weeks sent the harmful algae down the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie rivers. Satellite images this week showed very little algae as well.
Florida Department of Environmental Protection reminds residents that winds and tides tend to push the components of blue-green algae around, so people in that region should be watchful for the potentially toxic bloom.
What is red tide?
Red tide is one type of harmful algal bloom caused by high concentrations of the toxic dinoflagellate K. brevis, which is a type of microscopic algae found in the Gulf of Mexico.
Red tide typically forms naturally offshore, commonly in late summer or early fall, and is carried into coastal waters by winds and currents. Once inshore, these opportunistic organisms can use nearshore nutrient sources to fuel their growth.
Blooms typically last into winter or spring but, in some cases, can endure for more than one year.
Is red tide harmful?
K. brevis produces potent neurotoxins that can be harmful to the health of both wildlife and people. Wind and wave action can break open K. brevis cells and release toxins into the air. This is why beachgoers should monitor conditions and stay away from beaches where red tide is in bloom.
People in coastal areas can experience varying degrees of eye, nose, and throat irritation during a red tide bloom. Some individuals with chronic respiratory conditions like asthma or chronic lung disease might experience more severe symptoms.
Red tide toxins can also affect the central nervous system of fish and other marine life, which can lead to fish kills. Even really big tarpon can succumb.
What causes red tide?
The building blocks of red tide occur naturally offshore of Southwest Florida (and around the world). If the winds are blowing to the east strong enough or long enough, the collection of micro-organisms can form a bloom nearshore.
Recent studies have discovered mankind's overuse of fertilizers and other nutrients we wash into the waterways that lead to the Gulf of Mexico can make a fledgling bloom get bigger and last longer than it otherwise would have.
What is blue-green algae?
Blue-green algae, also known as cyanobacteria, are a group of organisms that can live in freshwater, saltwater or brackish water.
Large concentrations, called blooms, can change the water color to blue, green, brown, orange, or red. Some cyanobacterial blooms can look like foam, scum, or mats on the surface of freshwater lakes and ponds. As algae in a cyanobacterial bloom die, the water may smell like something with a naturally unpleasant odor has now started to rot, too.
Is blue-green algae harmful?
Different types of blue-green algal bloom species can look different and have different impacts. However, regardless of species, many types of blue-green algae can produce toxins that can make you or your pets sick if swallowed or possibly cause skin and eye irritation.
The FDEP advises staying out of the water where algae are visibly present as specks or mats or where water is discolored. Pets or livestock should not come into contact with algal bloom-impacted water or with algal bloom material or fish on the shoreline. If they do, wash the animals right away.
What causes blue-green algae?
Blue-green algae blooms occur when the algae that are typically present grow in numbers more than normal. Within a few days, a bloom can cause clear water to become cloudy.
Winds tend to push the floating blooms to the shore where they become more noticeable. Cyanobacterial blooms can form in warm, slow-moving waters that are rich in nutrients. Blooms can occur at any time, but most often occur in late summer or early fall.
If any major type of water quality alert is issued, you can find the details here in WGCU’s Water Quality Report.
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