Toxic algae still heavy along Southwest Florida coast
Chad Gillis
Red tide levels are lower this week in Lee County than they've been in a while, but the toxic algal bloom is still present in local waters.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission released its latest red tide report Wednesday, and numbers are mostly medium in Lee County. Counts in Collier County have been at natural background levels.
Breathing conditions at local beaches have improved in recent weeks, but a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration report says breathing irritation will be intense this week on Sanibel Island, northern Pine Island Sound and at at beaches in Sarasota, Manatee and Pinellas counties.
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Some people on Sanibel say conditions deteriorated over the weekend, that toxins from the bloom are airborne at some local beaches.
"I was at Bowman’s beach (on Sanibel) Sunday evening, and within seconds of arrival, three children, two adults and two dogs were all coughing like mad," said Heather Barron, director the animal hospital at the Center for the Rehabilitation of Wildlife. "My throat is still sore."
Barron is a leading expert on the effects of red tide on animals and humans.
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She and others have said that although conditions at the beaches may improve at times, the bloom will likely thrive for several more months.
"Things are now getting worse again, not better," Barron said. "And I expect they will stay bad until spring of 2019."
Red tide season typically begins in October and ends in January or February, after cooler temperatures and stiff winds out of the north make conditions difficult for blooms to form.
"We're still seeing some really dense patches showing up," said Rick Bartleson, a water quality scientist at the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation on Sanibel. "Last Friday along Sanibel a stretch had around 200 million cells per liter. We haven't seen that this week, but we did see 86 million on one of the south beaches. The next day that 86 million went down to 2 million at that same place."
Fish kills and respiratory issues in humans can start when levels reach 10,000 cells per liter, according to the FWC.
Only two sites in Lee County tested for high counts of 1 million cells per liter or more, according to the FWC report.
Bartleson said Tropical Storm Gordon seemed to help.
"After the storm it went down," Bartleson said. "Almost all of my samples on the beach side were down, but last week they started popping back up. We had 13 million (cells per liter) at Tarpon Beach on Saturday."
Elevated red tide levels associated with this bloom were first reported by the NOAA on Oct. 16, although local animal hospitals were seeing red tide patients as early as August 2017.
This is the longest-lived red tide since an outbreak that lasted from October 2004 through March 2006, according to FWC records.
A hazardous beach conditions advisory from the National Weather Service remains in place for Lee, Charlotte, Sarasota, Manatee and Pinellas counties through Thursday evening.
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Red tide is patchy by nature, and beaches that show low counts one day can show high counts the next, and vice versa.
Counts can sway from 10,000 cells per liter one day to 1 million cells per liter and higher the next, records show.
The bloom became particularly problematic earlier this summer when onshore winds pushed the red tide and millions of pounds of dead animals onto local beaches and shorelines.
Winds have largely been out of the east in recent weeks, which has pushed the higher counts away from some beaches.
Red tide has also shown up recently in the Panhandle.
The University of South Florida College of Marine Science says the bloom will move south over the next three days.
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