August 30, 2010
Just published in the journal, Aquatic Toxicology, is a study by Dong-Ha Nam and colleagues on the effects of brevetoxins on sharks. Brevetoxins are the toxins that are released by organisms like Karenia Brevis, the organism that is behind Florida Red Tide. The conclusion? Brevetoxins modify the neurochemistry of shark brains, making them over-excited and even killing them.
The authors of this study focused on lemon sharks entirely, they believe however that this research applies to all sharks.
Here’s how the study went:
Continued…
Categories: Education, Florida Red Tide News, Red Tide Information.
Tags: brevetoxins, science
April 15, 2010
Did you know that Main’s Red tide is a completely different animal than the K. Brevis that makes up Florida Red Tide?
It’s called Alexandrium Tamarence. It behaves differently, but the effects are just as destructive.
Categories: Education, Red Tide Maine.
Tags: Alexandrium Tamarence, Maine Red tide, Red Tide Maine
December 19, 2009
Scicurious from “Friday’s Wierd Science” has written a sexy article about a massive Diatom bloom that occurred off the coast of Napels (Italy, not Florida this tiem). It’s pretty rare that marine biology can be sexy. But since this story is and diatoms are what red tide are made off, we just made to mention that great article here and give them their props!
Read the full article, with pictures, here.
Categories: Education, Red Tide Information.
Tags: diatoms, science
December 19, 2009
It’s been long known by citizens, especially in Florida, that red tide kills pets and contributes to deaths of the elderly and the sickly that are bed ridden near red tide contaminated waters. The latter is pretty rare, because usually, anyone that has the resources to live near the water in Florida, has the resources to move when their doctor says “You’re sick already, get away from the red tide!”
Pets and other land animals are a completely different story. Not only are their mouths closer to the ground (the toxins are slightly heavier than air), but lots of animals have no choice but to stay.
Texas Officials are warning people to keep their pets away from the beach, as the red tide has killed several and sickened many many more.
Ever seen a pelican that appears to be drunk during a red tide bloom?
WARNING: It gets grim, sad and a little graphic below: Continued…
Categories: Education, Red Tide Information, Rumors, Texas Red Tide, inept government, medical info.
Tags: birds, health effects, pets, Texas
May 16, 2009
Florida Citizens and visitors have been using the report red tide (thanks!) page to tell us about what they thought was a large red tide bloom along the east coast of Florida. Well Florida’s Fish and Wildlife Research Institute begs to differ.
Algae
They say it’s a less lethal “diatom” bloom. I’m not sure if they are purposely trying to confuse you or they are trying to be scientifically accurate. But it’s an algae bloom folks.
Continued…
Categories: Education, Florida Red Tide News, Florida Red tide report, News.
Tags: algae bloom, east coast, FWRI, HAB, red tide report, Thalassiosira
May 4, 2009
It looks like Lee County is not only learning how to prevent red tide, but is also learning that all they have to do is try and they’ll make a difference. They’ve recently enacted legislation which while poorly written and still not very effective, will make a difference.
Here’s some of the points the legislation covers:
The new ordinance stipulates that fertilizers containing nitrogen or phosphorus cannot be used during the four-month rainy season of June through September.
Fertilizer application is also prohibited within 10 feet of any body of water, seawall or wetland.
All spreaders must be equipped with a deflector shield to better target application and to prevent errant fertilizer from being spread into water buffer areas and hard impervious surfaces like roads, driveways and sidewalks.
Clippings and trimmings cannot be swept or blown into ditches, drains or any body of water, or onto any road or sidewalk.
Professional landscapers are required to register with the county and have at least one employee certified through a training program offered by the University of Florida Lee County Extension Service.
What’s the poorly written parts:
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Categories: Education, Environmental News, Florida Red Tide News, Prevention, Red Tide Information, inept government, red tide mitigation method.
Tags: lee county, Prevention
February 11, 2009
Red Tide mitigation is actually pretty easy. Japan, the Phillipines, South Korea, Vietnam and many other countries have been doing it for years. I call it the clay mitigation method. The exact formula is even know. I’ll give it away for free right now:
Spray a clay slurry on the effected area to a concentration of 8 grams per liter of water.
Bloom gone, fish live, no untoward consequences.
Yup, that’s it. Simple whuh?
Ok, now U.S. and Florida government, why won’t you mitigate red tide blooms?
By the way, preventing red tide is pretty simple too.
The real question is:
How are we going to force the government to prevent and mitigate Florida Red Tide?
It’s a shame we have to, but they went for several years trying to say that red tide doesn’t bother us, red tide is harmless, red tide isn’t on the increase, red tide isn’t linked to pollution etc. etc. etc. So it looks like we are going have to either persuade or force the government to serve it’s citizens.
latest news story on this topic for the east
TAGS: Solution, Mitigation
Categories: Education, Red Tide Information, inept government, red tide mitigation method, solutions.
Tags: mitigation, solution
January 11, 2009
In the past we’ve heard from the Florida Government, Mote Marine, START and other government and semi-government entities that “There is no proof that red tide is caused by nutrient pollution. This site provided the evidence and other groups brought to meeting after meeting held by Mote Marine, FWC and others. finally after a few years these organizations and government entities stopped trying to say there was no link.
Several studies have come out recently proving the relations between nutrients like fertilizers from homeowners lawns, golf courses and those oh so important medians between roads (they really need to be fertilized?)
Continued…
Categories: Education, Red Tide Information, Rumors, inept government.
Tags: evidence, polluted runoff, pollution link, research
November 25, 2008
Plankton Parasites
The research into the little known (until reported here), area of Plankton Parasites (or parasitoids ), is paying off. In case you haven’t heard, there is a species of micro organisms that feed on specific species of plankton (K. Brevis is one of them). It seems that when several harmful algal blooms like red tide blooms occur in a series for more than a few years in a row (like the last 15 years in Florida or the last 5 in Maine) the problem may be that this parasite can’t survive something and thus can’t flourish enough to reduce the amount of K Brevis in the water.
Here’s some quotes from an article about it:
Using a new technique that allows researchers to track the parasites as they infect the plankton with fluorescent markers, Guillou and her colleagues were able to monitor both an invasive species of plankton and the parasites for three years in a coastal estuary in France. What they were able to see was the very early infection of the plankton by the parasite, and then the eventual swelling and bursting of the plankton as the parasite’s many offspring broke free — hungry to infect again.
“We hypothesize that when a bloom occurs, these parasitoids are not able to infect the invasive species,” Guillou said.
quoted news story
Categories: Actions, Education, Florida Red Tide News, News, Red Tide Information, Rumors, red tide mitigation method, solutions.
Tags: parasitoids, plankton parasites, science, solution
April 9, 2008
The Sierra Club is hosting a Red Tide Forum this Thursday, 2pm, at the Manatee Community College campus in Venice, in the Selby Room at the Professional Development Center of the campus.
Topics covered will be Red Tide, fertilizers and water resources.
Larry Brand, a professor of marine biology at the University of Miami will be the featured speaker. Larry Brand is known for his research linking human activity — fertilizer and phosphates — along Florida’s coastline to the increase in red tide and other harmful algal blooms in the Gulf of Mexico.
Categories: Actions, Education, Florida Red Tide News, Red Tide Information.
February 2, 2008
This post is for Doctors and Vets who have the need to treat people or animals with symptoms of exposure to Red Tide.
Red Tide Health Effects and Treatment Options 
The casual reader will find the attached document a bit much to read. However I will try to summarize accurately.
Continued…
Categories: Education, Red Tide Information, Rumors, medical info.
Tags: , , atropine, diphenhydramine, health effects, neostigmine, red tide exposure, tetrodotoxin, treatment, verapamil
January 27, 2008
This is yet another response to those who say there is no way known to stop a red tide bloom. There are many, here’s one that’s been proven to work and be environmentally safe. It’s been used in Asia for decades.
Continued…
Categories: Actions, Education, Red Tide Information, Rumors, red tide mitigation method, solutions.
January 27, 2008
In general I beleive that breeding one species of life to control another is usually a bad idea. But the typical human in me always asks “what could be the harm?” usually I come with an answer, right away. For instance – the greatest harm is usually the new species becomes a problem!
Several times in the past has this very situation been brought about by humans., However many times things work out just fine. Like those bacteria they put in septic tanks. Works fine. When the source of food is gone, the bacteria die off.
Continued…
Categories: Education, Red Tide Information, red tide mitigation method.
November 15, 2007
Is it another wink and nod recognition for my work on Florida red tide? The work that helped get the Federal grant money to study the effects of rainwater on red tide blooms, may have been why they have decided to put the new enter to develop models to forecast Florida red tides at the University of South Florida’s College of Marine Science in St. Petersburg, right down the way from my offices.
Continued…
Categories: Actions, Education, Florida Red Tide News, News, Rumors.
November 15, 2007
The Red Tide bloom in north west Florida may be being fed by nutrients from the Mississippi river. Researchers led by Richard P. Stumpf of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have concluded that nutrients are pushed by seasonal winds in the fall from the Missippi river to the west coast of Florida and feed red tide blooms.
Continued…
Categories: Education, Environmental News, Florida Red Tide News, Red Tide Information, Rumors.
November 10, 2007
Hello Florida Red Tide Solution members and readers. I’ve got a question for you from a visitor to Florida about some health problems associated with red tide:
Continued…
Categories: Actions, Education, Red Tide Information.
October 26, 2007
Hello! Texx Smith here. I’m the producer, designer, developer, editor and marketer for this web site Red Tide Florida.
I’m very pleased to say that several readers have made accounts and would like to write and article (post) or two for this web site. This is great for the public because the more true information the public gets about red tide, the more people will see how easy it is to control red tide. Maybe someone’s words will even inspire the next inventor to develop a cure for red tide.
Writing for Red Tide Florida is easy:
- Sign up for a free account here.
- Login
- Click the link at the top of the page that says “Write“
- Write your post, as you can see the site’s administrative back end includes a text editor for you that have many word processor type features and is easy to use.
- Try to remember to pick a category on the right if you can.
- Click the “Publish” button.
- I will approve the article within 24 hours.
That’s all there is to it!
Thanks for the help!
Texx Smith
Categories: Actions, Education, Red Tide Solutions News, Rumors.
October 19, 2007
This comes to us from a man named Nick who lives in Pensacola Florida. He’s not a staff member or affiliated with us in any way. He just wanted people to know what it’s like living with the latest red tide bloom. So we (with his permission) re-printed his e-mail here:
I was out at Pensacola Beach today, inside Fort Pickens National Seashore
State Park, and there is a serious Red Tide happening right now. (as of this
afternoon.) The red tide was so bad that just being near the water caused my eyes to
burn, I started coughing from the fumes coming out of the sea spray.
I’m not a scientist, but I know when somethings is wrong. I can say that in the past 15 years
of me living in Pensacola I haven’t seen the red tide get this bad. There was tons of
dead fish, miles and miles of dead fish. Even the insects were dead. Dead butterflys,
dead dragon flys, dead flys… etc etc. Dead birds. Basically all the marine life
within 50 yards or more to the beach was dead.
It was awful. I couldn’t stand it any longer and I had to leave. The fumes from the water were just too toxic for me to even be on the beach breathing the air. The air was toxic. I got out of there as fast as I could. I have run on Pensacola Beach almost everyday for the past 2 years
now, and I’ve seen red tides come and go, but I have never seen a red tide like this
one.
I just wanted to let ya’ll know, that Pensacola, FL. is having a serious red tide
event happening right now.
– Nik Johnson
Pensacola, Florida
Getting out of there as fast was a wise move!
-TxS
Categories: Education, Florida Red Tide News, Florida Red tide report, Red Tide Information, Rumors.
August 1, 2007
The return of oxygen-depleted water off the Oregon coast is a sign of a warming climate, which could have ill effect on populations of sea creatures, scientists said Monday.
It’s the sixth year the water, known as a dead zone, has formed.
“It does, indeed, appear to be the new normal,” said Jane Lubchenco, professor of marine biology at Oregon State University. “The fact that we are seeing six in a row now tells us that something pretty fundamental has changed about conditions off of our coast.”
Quoted from: Wired News. Check out the rest of the news article, it’s short, very informative and easy to read.
Categories: Education, Environmental News, News.
April 4, 2007
Erik Downes, 16, and Andrew Mehlman, 17, want to accomplish nothing less than “determine an end to the serious problem of red tide … and to find the largest factor for why the bloom grows so large so quickly.”
We like your style kids! These are our goals too.
Sounds great but how did they (like other high school kids before them), beat Mote Marine and FWRI at their own game?
Continued…
Categories: Education, Florida Red Tide News, News, Red Tide Information.
March 28, 2007
A team of nearly 50 researchers has determined that an algae bloom known as red tide was responsible for the earlier deaths of animals off the Florida coast.
The research team found that the mysterious deaths of scores of turtles, bottlenose dolphins and manatees back in 2005 off the southwest coast of Florida was likely caused a neurotoxin that was emitted from the red tide, The Washington Post said.
The Working Group on Marine Mammal Unusual Mortality Events study determined that brevetoxin was the likely culprit in the deaths after examining 130 stranded dolphins.
The scientific revelation also comes in the wake of 64 bottlenose dolphins washing up dead on the Texas and Louisiana coasts.
National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration scientist Teri Rowles told the Post that experts were working together to determine the cause of the new dolphin deaths.
Read quoted story
Categories: Education, Environmental News, Florida Red Tide News, Red Tide Information.
January 13, 2007
This one is real quick and to the point. I wouldn’t even include if ti wasn’t for the fact the State, FWRI, FFWG, Mote Marine, START, and the Red Tide Alliance have repeatedly said there’s no evidence pointing to a link between red tide and polluted run off. (By the way, since we and others have been drumming this point they’ve changed their tune slightly, now the tune is “The evidence shows no link . . .”). Anyway governor here’s some evidence for ya:
“Referring to a 1962 report to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Larry Brand said, scientists 40 years ago traced red tide in the Gulf to heavy fresh-water discharges from the Caloosahatchee River. Part of the report, called “Biological Investigations of Caloosahatchee Estuary in Connection with Lake Okeechobee Discharges through Caloosahatchee River,” addresses whether increasing the river’s width to accommodate more flow from the lake would trigger more red tide blooms.”
Mr Crist, please read the above and help save us from our government!
Read quoted story
Categories: Education.
January 13, 2007
For some reason our state government and a handful of scientific and pseudo-scientific organizations they sponsor namely, FWRI, Mote Marine, S.T.A.R.T. and the Red Tide Alliance have all been telling blatant mistruths about red tide. Today I will present evidence directly discounting one of their “errors”. We will call them errors instead of lies, because it’s hard for even us to believe they want more red tide. We’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they are just inept and not deliberately trying to mislead the public.
Today’s error is the state and their org’s claim that red tide is not on the rise. Now anyone who has been in Florida for a decade or more can tell you that it is obviously on the rise. But they only have the benefit of their relatively short life span to draw from. For patterns covering longer periods of time we look to science to answer the question “Are red tide and other harmful algal blooms increasing in frequency, duration, size and or intensity?” The science says yes!
For some reason the state has repeatedly, um, misinterpreted the science, and encouraged these organizations to follow suit. Don’t take my word for it, please. Listen to what Larry Brand, marine biology professor with the University of Miami has to say:
Continued…
Categories: Education, Florida Red Tide News, Red Tide Information.
January 13, 2007
Mote Marine Read this:
I know your keen on trying to say the science says there’s no link between red tide and pollution. But the public is catching on. Just in case this is an honest mistake on your part, Here’s some evidence of the links between red tide and pollution:
“Nutrient limits in Japan’s Seto Inland Sea in 1974 have reduced the annual occurrence of red tides there from more than 300 to more than 100, according to a chart Anderson showed those attending Wednesday’s session.” and “Another chart showed an upward trend in coastal red tides in China that coincided with increased fertilizer use. “ This came from a scientist who was trying to somehow convince the public that there is no link. His name is Donald Anderson, he works at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. Give him a call and discuss his data. I know you’ll probably actually discuss ways to better mislead the public, but maybe, just maybe, the human side of you will come out and you’ll decide to confess the truth to the public, and then do something about it.
Continued…
Categories: Education, Florida Red Tide News, Red Tide Information.
January 6, 2007
Even though not a lot of people are swimming this time of year, this is still important news for all beachgoers in the central Florida area. There’s been a multitude of jellyfish at beaches in Central Florida’s Volusia County and Brevard County. When the wind blows the jellyfish blow ashore, where they are stepped on, picked up by children or investigated by dogs.
Blown ashore? These particular jellyfish are Portuguese Man of War jellyfish. their venom is quite powerful, although rarely is it lethal. The stings are always quite painful and if you have an allergy it can cause panafilactic shock, which can be a very serious threat to your life.
What do to if you get stung?
Continued…
Categories: Education, Environmental News, News, Rumors.
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