Red Tide?

(Photos: Wikipedia: LaJolla, CA Red Tide,
& Western Baltic Sea Dead Zone)

I remember the Tampa TV guy looking sternly into the camera, saying something about how Red Tide was now expected off of Clearwater by midweek. They showed footage from beach points to the south - and all the dead fish, and countless complaints from motel operators about empty rooms. Apparently, a lot of people complained about respiratory ailments. Naturally, being young, arrogant, and indestructible, we almost all cried out in unison: "We ain't 'fraid a no Red Tide." (Even before "Ghost Busters," we were all talking like that. Yeah.)

Naturally, we hadn't even gotten within 1/4 mile of Red Tide. One snoot full of the aerosol toxins - not necessarily the dead fish smell, either - and you got the "Red Tide Religion" right quick, as the Florida crackers used to say. It burns the throat, the sinuses, the lungs, and causes the eyes to get all puffy.

It's not new - it's just worse than ever. The logs of the Spanish mention fish kills in Tampa Bay, and New World sources mention it starting in 1840. Now, some say you can swim in the stuff. If you wanna swim in it, well, go ahead. For those who actually advocate this practice, I'd like to suggest some fine things these folks could eat. (Well, that, too). But I was thinking more along the lines of scallops, clams and oysters - dipped in a pungent, slightly rust colored soup. Swim in it? Nope, not me. (Cracker speak: "Hail, no.")

Red tide and algal blooms are influenced by nutrient loading from humans, yielding things like nitrates and phosphates. If you raise fish in a pond, certain algae, when eaten by the fish, will yield an unpleasant taste. Algae tend to love nitrates - like fertilizers - and they give off some rancid smells.

Wherever algae grow, some naturally dies. This same dead organic stuff becomes a food source for bacteria. This same bacteria increases and uses up the available oxygen in the water, (DO or dissolved oxygen). When the DO declines, many fish cannot live. Got pond scum or algae? Oxygenate.


Ever hear of Dead Zones? (I'm not talking Stephen King, or even cell phones, but a real life phenomenon). Caused mainly by fertilizer runoff, the most notorious is in the good ole' Gulf of Mexico - about 20,000 square kilometers, compliments of all the runoff from the Mississippi River. Don't bother fishing in the Gulf of Mexico's dead zone, by the way. No fish. Dead zones, of low dissolved oxygen, are now worldwide.

Dead Zones, like algal blooms, ARE reversible. As a case in point, after the old Soviet Union collapsed, the Black Sea dead zone (formerly the biggest in the world) almost disappeared. Why? Fertilizer became very expensive, and dropped in usage from 1991 to 2001. Fishing has come back! (So has the fertilizer. Oh, well.)