![]() ![]() Its position can shift dramatically from year to year and is hard to predict. ![]() The warm water current travels up from the Caribbean, past the Yucatan Peninsula and into the Gulf of Mexico and then loops back down into the Florida Strait. Scientists also believe that a particular current, known as the Loop Current, can have a powerful effect on when red tide forms and how bad it gets. There have been large amounts of trichodesmium, which is sometimes mistaken for sewage, in the Gulf this year, Heil said. It produces large amounts of excess nitrogen that provide red tide with a food source when it’s miles offshore. One of those conditions is the presence of trichodesmium, a cyanobacteria also known as sea sawdust. “But we’re not out of the woods yet.”īefore Hurricane Ian, some of the other conditions that help red tide thrive were already setting up in the Gulf, according to Heil, who is studying the blooms with a grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. ![]() This map contains the last eight days of sampling and is updated daily at 5 p.m. “It’s been an interesting year, because we have so far had no sign whatsoever,” Heil said in late September. In Florida, the species that causes most red tides is Karenia brevis (K. The algae, though naturally present in the Gulf, had hardly made a blip on the radar this year. So we’re still eagerly watching what happens.”Įach week, FWC researchers and their partners collect samples in waters up and down the state and test for the presence of K. “Very rarely do we get a year without a red tide,” said Cynthia Heil, director of Mote Marine Laboratory’s Red Tide Institute in Sarasota. It lingered through the fall, killing thousands of tons of marine life around Tampa Bay.īut historically, late summer and fall is when red tide blooms most often occur. It then worsened after millions of gallons of contaminated water from the Piney Point industrial plant were released into the Gulf. Another bloom started in the winter of 2020 and hung around through the spring of 2021. The Florida Department of Health advises people with severe or chronic respiratory conditions, such as emphysema or asthma, to avoid red tide areas.The past several years brought untimely and long-lasting bouts of red tide to the Gulf Coast of Florida.Ī devastating red tide event spanned from late 2017 to early 2019. Offshore winds usually keep respiratory effects experienced by those on the shore to a minimum. brevis, is present and winds blow onshore. Some people experience respiratory irritation (coughing, sneezing, tearing and an itchy throat) when the Florida red tide organism, K. Will I experience respiratory irritation during a Florida red tide? The database contains more than 200,000 records from samples provided by more. The duration of a bloom in nearshore Florida waters depends on physical and biological conditions that influence its growth and persistence, including sunlight, nutrients and salinity, as well as the speed and direction of wind and water currents. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission's Fish and Wildlife Research Institute (FWRI) harmful algal bloom (HAB) database documents Karenia brevis blooms, also called red tides, from 1953 to the present one of the longest records of red tide data. Red tides can last as little as a few weeks or longer than a year. Fish kills near Tampa Bay were even mentioned in the records of Spanish explorers. No, red tides were documented in the southern Gulf of Mexico as far back as the 1700s and along Florida's Gulf coast in the 1840s. brevis blooms from red tides caused by other species of algae, researchers in Florida call the former the “Florida red tide.” Is red tide a new phenomenon? In Florida and the Gulf of Mexico, the species that causes most red tides is Karenia brevis, often abbreviated as K. A red tide, or harmful algal bloom, is a higher-than-normal concentration of a microscopic alga (plantlike organism). ![]()
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