It's Not Looking Good For Us With The Red Tide

[Mackerelman]

content.govdelivery.com/accounts/FLFFWCC/bulletins/34df5fd

Red Tide Maps:
ocgweb.marine.usf.edu/hab_tracking/HAB_trajectories.html?utm_content=&utm_medium=email&utm_name=&utm_source=govdelivery&utm_term=campaign

[wiscojigpitch]

Do you know what the black (drifter) means?

[carlf]

Black means no red tide detected.
Unless we get a huge rain event to flush the bay, it will be in Old Tampa Bay and Hillsborough Bay in less than a couple of weeks.

[Mackerelman]

Burning eyes, dead fish; red tide flares up on Florida coast

www.yahoo.com/news/burning-eyes-dead-fish-red-185814787.html

[Flatsrunner]

Mar 12, 2023 11:36:46 GMT -5 Mackerelman said:

Burning eyes, dead fish; red tide flares up on Florida coast

www.yahoo.com/news/burning-eyes-dead-fish-red-185814787.html

To make matters worse. I read earlier that a giant sargassum bloom off the Atlantic coast of Africa and the Gulf of Mexico, may be heading to our own shores. Would be the knock out punch to the S/W coast.

[tears143]

Mar 12, 2023 19:09:17 GMT -5 Flatsrunner said:

Mar 12, 2023 11:36:46 GMT -5 Mackerelman said:

Burning eyes, dead fish; red tide flares up on Florida coast

www.yahoo.com/news/burning-eyes-dead-fish-red-185814787.html

To make matters worse. I read earlier that a giant sargassum bloom off the Atlantic coast of Africa and the Gulf of Mexico, may be heading to our own shores. Would be the knock out punch to the S/W coast.

nah. those sargassum grass r good for fishes and crabs

[Flatsrunner]

Offshore it's great, I used to catch plenty fish off them, The problem is when it moves inshore to the beaches and starts to die and rot, The smell is bad and affects air and water quality.

[silverspoon]

This may unfortunately be the new normal, have we reached the tipping point on excessive nutrient loading due to lack of real action on historical pollution sources to the gulf (Lake Okeechobee discharges, Piney Point discharges) and the ever increasing load of fertilizer leaching in storm water from all the new lawns in west-central Florida?

It seems that in the past the eco system was able to attenuate (consume) the nutrients so that red tides were hit and miss, we actually made periods of years between blooms. But currently is seems we are getting blooms consistently. The amount of sea life (fish and sea grass) that dies every year is immense and has long-term adverse impacts to the fish populations. I have given up going to the pier and fishing anywhere south of Tarpon Springs as I find more likely than not that I catch no fish or even see them present in the water. That I blame squarely on the red tides we are having year after year, the fish have no chance of making a comeback under these conditions.

Not sure what can be done about if except complain to State agencies but this is nothing new to them so I don't expect anything significant to change until we finally have a crisis that gets the State to act. What is a crisis if the death of millions of pounds of fish is acceptable to the State? What needs to happen before the State says enough is enough?

[SkyJay]

[silverspoon]

On a positive note, I was told the deep injection well at Piney Point is nearing completion, I hope that all the infrastructure to treat the waste water is near completion too so that at least that source of pollution can finally be dealt with so that there is no need to dump waste water into the bay!

[Mackerelman]

Mar 15, 2023 9:47:38 GMT -5 silverspoon said:

On a positive note, I was told the deep injection well at Piney Point is nearing completion, I hope that all the infrastructure to treat the waste water is near completion too so that at least that source of pollution can finally be dealt with so that there is no need to dump waste water into the bay!

The State better get it cleaned up before Hurricane Season starts or it will fill back up.

[silverspoon]

www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/seagrass-is-dying-by-tampa-and-sarasota-as-red-tide-worsens-is-florida-doing-enough/ar-AA18KskJ?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=64413b5345734a3ef23a7b27b883bc7d&ei=47#

Really good article, a little long but hits all the points, finally someone with credentials pointing the finger at the Piney Point discharges that pretty much the State was trying to sugar coat, even to the point of stating that red tide is "natural", what a BS line, yes it's natural but it should not be growing into gigantic blooms that kill everything!

[silverspoon]

"Piney Point was probably the worst thing that happened to Tampa Bay for 50 years," said Tomasko, who has worked on multiple studies tracing the pollution event's impact. "It was like 200 million gallons of liquid fertilizer. It's going to take awhile for us to get through this. It's going to have manifestations."

Tomasko estimates that 80% of the seagrass loss in the most recent survey is in areas affected by the plume of the spill.

A study published in May 2022 in Marine Pollution Bulletin found that the spill likely made that year's red tide much more severe by feeding it about 180 metric tons of nitrogen. The untimely bloom killed hundreds of tons of marine life in Tampa Bay and Southwest Florida waters.

"We believe that a certain amount of this loss of seagrass is attributed to Piney Point," Tomasko said. "We also believe that it created some of the worst macroalgal blooms in upper Sarasota Bay in people's memory."


A big Thank You to Dr. Tomasko! Has the guts to say it like it is, unlike State agencies who have theirs ***** cut off by the State and not allowed to say such a thing.

[kenb]

Dropped my cameras down last week and was shocked at the lack of fish.  Plenty of threadfins but no snapper and very few sheepshead.

[kenb]

The contrast from last year this time to this year on the SSP is dramatic.  I literally saw no snapper under the bridge.  Very few fish now.  I'm assuming when they dumped the waste from Piney Point into the Bay they wiped out a large part of the ecosystem.  

[carlf]

Mar 22, 2023 4:35:23 GMT -5 kenb said:

The contrast from last year this time to this year on the SSP is dramatic.  I literally saw no snapper under the bridge.  Very few fish now.  I'm assuming when they dumped the waste from Piney Point into the Bay they wiped out a large part of the ecosystem.  

There is nothing to support this assumption. Piney Point was bad, as was the resulting red tide. But saying it wiped out the entire ecosytem is not supported by data. 

[carlf]

myfwc.maps.arcgis.com/apps/View/index.html?appid=87162eec3eb846218cec711d16462a72

Recent sampling indicates red tide has reduced across the board except for medium levels around the mouth of the bay.
This is probably why fish numbers seem down around the SSP/NSP, mobile fish will leave the area.
Plus sheepshead should be done with the spawn and will be dispersing now.
Hopefully this trend will continue and we will not get whacked this summer.

[silverspoon]

The smell of death in the water likely has something to do with when fish tend to leave or avoid an area, just like with any animal, the smell of the dead is not pleasant. That in addition to poor water quality and the absence of supporting sea grasses killed off by the red tides. It's a mixed bag of all bad things, hopefully it does get addressed with long-term fixes so the coast can get back to better days.

[carlf]

I'd like to see the latest SWFWMD sea grass mapping data to see how extensive the die back is. My understanding is that the die off from Piney Point & associated red tide was generally restricted to the southeastern part of the bay.

[silverspoon]

Mar 24, 2023 6:32:58 GMT -5 carlf said:

I'd like to see the latest SWFWMD sea grass mapping data to see how extensive the die back is. My understanding is that the die off from Piney Point & associated red tide was generally restricted to the southeastern part of the bay.

I'm pretty sure what ever SWFWMD has is available online at their website.

I previously posted excerpt from news article: "Piney Point was probably the worst thing that happened to Tampa Bay for 50 years," said Tomasko, who has worked on multiple studies tracing the pollution event's impact. "It was like 200 million gallons of liquid fertilizer. It's going to take awhile for us to get through this. It's going to have manifestations."



Tomasko estimates that 80% of the seagrass loss in the most recent survey is in areas affected by the plume of the spill.



A study published in May 2022 in Marine Pollution Bulletin found that the spill likely made that year's red tide much more severe by feeding it about 180 metric tons of nitrogen. The untimely bloom killed hundreds of tons of marine life in Tampa Bay and Southwest Florida waters.



"We believe that a certain amount of this loss of seagrass is attributed to Piney Point," Tomasko said. "We also believe that it created some of the worst macroalgal blooms in upper Sarasota Bay in people's memory."


Any way you slice it, the die off is bad, very bad, Dr. Tomasko estimates 80% of the loss is attributable to Piney Point discharges.  We can't condone bad choices made due to lack of action to address a very long term problem.