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Horrendous Red Tide and Bluegreen Algae Blooms in Florida

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FloridaWindSUP:
I'm not sure if this is making it to the national news yet, but we are in the midst of a colossal environmental disaster in South Florida, on the scale of last summer's hurricanes, or the Exxon Valdez or Deepwater Horizon oil spills, or the mega California wildfires.

Millions of fishes, hundreds of sea turtles and manatees, dolphins, and even giant whale sharks are dying and washing up on the shores of our lakes, rivers, estuaries, and beachfronts. The culprits are two types of toxic algae blooms of unprecedented size; freshwater bluegreen algae (a cyanobacteria; Microcystis aeruginosa) and saltwater red tide (a dinoflagellate; Karenia brevis). The culprit behind both deadly blooms seems to be excess nutrient input from various forms of pollution, due to decades of rampant reckless development concurrent with a systematic dismantling of the state's environmental regulatory capacity by the current corrupt governor, commissioner of agriculture, attorney general, etc. 

Though the red tide has been simmering since October, it really metastasized about a month ago, at the same time that the bluegreen algae bloom was exploding. A lot of it relates to botched "replumbing" of Lake Okeechobee, which is now drained through canals to the East and West coasts instead of flowing south and filtering through the Everglades. 

The consequences for SUP'ing have been serious. The beaches in SW Florida are almost all very badly afflicted, to the point where you start coughing and get headaches and itchy eyes as soon as you step out of the car, and the freshwater and estuarine areas with the bluegreen bloom are so putrid and toxic that no one would even dare put a board in. We've driven inland to a few blackwater rivers that flow out of unpolluted swamps and are still relatively safe. It's a bad, bad situation, though.

If you want to learn more, I wrote a blog about it.

http://jimbodouglass.blogspot.com/2018/07/eutrophication-word-every-floridian.html

spirit4earth:
That’s heartbreaking.  It has made it to the news, but because human life hasn’t been lost, it hasn’t been getting much coverage, unfortunately.

Tom:
Im starting to see more  on the national news but have been seeing the devastation on some environmental sites I follow.  Alot of people are blaming `big sugar ` and the Florida government. Not sure what's behind those accusations.

Ichabod Spoonbill:
Tom, from what I understand, these algae blooms are coming from an excess of nutrients in the water from agricultural runoff. Since sugar is the main crop, their fertilizers seem to be the culprit. It's most likely a combination of things, but the sugar runoff the main one.

cocoloco:
Thanks for the article. Will share with fellow surfers and paddlers here in Miami Beach. I could not believe how much seaweed we have been wading through before reaching clear water recently! I can't remember it being worse than this. keep us posted on what else we can do.

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