Florida Red Tides Now Killing Fish 100 Miles Out To Sea - Boston Globe

[hatrack]

NAPLES, Fla. --A tenacious red tide bloom that has lingered in the Gulf of Mexico off Tampa Bay all year now is being blamed for recent fish kills 100 miles off southwest Florida, state biologists said.

Tests of samples taken Monday confirmed the presence of the toxic algae that can be deadly to fish, said Jeremy Lake, spokesman for the Florida Marine Research Institute in St. Petersburg. Strong westerly breezes are aggravating the problem by washing the dead fish ashore and causing some respiratory problems for people, he said. "The red tide is there, but in low concentrations," Lake said.

Crews in both counties have been cleaning up hundreds of dead fish every day from the beaches since last week, officials said. In some places, fish were washing up as fast as workers could remove them.

The massive red tide bloom that has plagued coastal waters this year from Honeymoon Island north of Clearwater to south of Sarasota has been extra toxic and deadly to sea life, scientists say, the worst in more than 30 years.

EDIT

http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2005/09/13/red_tide_blamed_for_fish_kills_in_florida/

[Missy M]

1. It makes you wonder how long this planet will be around......

we have managed to destroy so much of it in the last 100 years. How much longer can it sustain all the destruction and survive.

[phantom power]

3. The planet's fine. The biosphere has seen better days...

but life in general has survived 5 mass-extinctions. The future of high-maintenance species like humans is definitely shaky.

[Divernan]

2. Killed not just fish, but coral and all ocean plant life

in a swath 20 miles out into the Gulf and 60 miles along the Florida gulf coast. Dive operators were out of business and described the ocean bottom as looking as though a bomb had gone off and killed every living thing. There were some threads on DU about a month ago about this. And when coral is killed, it will take decades to grow back, and that won't happen if the ocean temps are too high or the water is polluted. So all the polluted water being pumped back into the Gulf or simply flowing back out of the polluted mouth of the Mississippi can meet up with the red tide algae spreading out from Florida's west coast, and god knows what that effect will be!