This is kinda troubling folks, the red tide bloom in Texas and the red tide bloom in southwestern Florida have Not been mitigated by the cold front like everyone expected.  Right now both of these red tides will increase in size or strength after the weather comes back?  Well that remains to be seen, but it sometimes does.  In fact it wasn’t too long ago that Florida had a red tide that lasted several years.   Right now the red tide report details the mostly broken up red tide.  However it’s based mostly on reports from FWRI, which is notorious for it’s efforts to downplay red tide and it’s effects.  For instance, in their latest rounds of tests, they didn’t take samples from the area off of the Ft Myers / Naples Florida area that had a large and rapidly growing red tide bloom just last week.  No samples taken, thus no red tide found.  See how that works?  It also has a contaminating effect on historical red tide tide data, but that’s a story for another time.

(more…)

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.

(more…)