The people of Florida’s Gulf Coast know when they see a bad Red Tide and they hate it.
The signs are difficult to miss, with dead fish littering beaches and coughing at the beach. Scientists claim that they have never been able to measure the blooms year-to-year.
The question is, “How bad was this?” Richard Stumpf is an oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who studies harmful algal blooms. We can now quantify it.
Red Tides have plagued Florida since the beginning of time, but most attempts to predict and understand them are still new. Stumpf was one of eight researchers who contributed to a recent study that established 0-to-10 (the most extensive) scales for measuring past blooms. One focuses on how far they went and how long they lasted. The other accounts for how much trouble people had onshore from them.
It is a step towards a system that could assign Red Tides ratings in real-time, much like how meteorologists categorize hurricanes by wind speed.
Barbara Kirkpatrick (a co-author on the study and a member Floridas Harmfulalgal Bloom/Red Tide Task Force) said that people mistakenly believe that every Red Tide is the exact same. However, the research shows that each bloom is unique and toxic alga can be intense in one spot while absent several miles down the coast.
She stated that it dispels people’s worries that all blooms travel from St. Pete to Naples and beyond 50 miles. Red Tides are highly variable, much like the difference in a Category 1 hurricane from a category 5, Kirkpatrick said.
Kirkpatrick stated that local governments should have a better understanding of the severity of individual blooms to help them prepare for storms. Officials could, for example, estimate the amount of dead fish and debris that they will need to remove. Florida has been hit by two devastating Red Tide events in recent years. One was in 2017 and another was last summer.
Pinellas County reported that it had collected more than 1,800 tonnes of dead sea life and other debris in both cases. These blooms occurred at different times and locations, with the Red Tide reaching earlier and farther up Tampa Bay.
Researchers reviewed Red Tide water samples from 1953 to 2019 and reports of respiratory irritation in Sarasota Counties between 2006 and 2019.
Before the mid-90s sampling was done by scattershot. This was often in response to reports of breathing difficulties or fish kills. Red Tide’s interest was dependent upon the weather, Stumpf stated, as the wind has a significant impact on how many people are affected by the toxic algae.
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Red Tide toxins are released into the atmosphere when a breeze blows ontoshore. However, a wind blowing offshore removes those toxins to the sea. Dead fish also work in the same way. Winds blow snook and seatrout, pinfish, and other carcasses either onto coastlines or out into the Gulf of Mexico. Depending on the day, people might not be aware of a significant Red Tide near them.
According to the study’s authors, Florida’s worst Red Tide events have occurred between 2006 and 2012, according to the study.
Kirkpatrick, a senior advisor to the Gulf of Mexico Coastal Ocean Observing System said that scientists have struggled in the past to secure funding due to the periodic nature of algal blooms. Research grants fluctuated according to the year and public interest. However, she stated that the government has been offering more consistent support in recent years.
Stumpf stated that he plans to continue updating the research annually based upon the Red Tide. Florida is not currently experiencing any blooms. Red Tide usually rises in the fall.
The algae almost always appears, however. The researchers found that the southwest coast, roughly from Collier to Pasco counties, has only been affected by an algae bloom once in the period 1994-1999.
