Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff Lauren bog Obam here. Since about the summer of the Gulf Coast of Florida has suffered from a disturbing phenomenon, an expanse of murky, reddish brown water that kills vast quantities of fish and other aquatic animals and leaves the beaches littered with carcasses, reeking from the smell of decomposition. The carnage is the result of a phenomenon called a red tide, an explosion of harmful alkal blooms that occurs
in ocean waters around the world. According to the u S National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, these blooms occur when colonies of particular kinds of algae, which are tiny plants that can live in both fresh and salt water, grow out of control and produce toxins that can kill fish and make shellfish unsafe to eat. The red tide that choked Florida lasted for almost eighteen months until February of twenty nineteen, when it was no longer detected in the waters,
but now it appears to be back. Scientists from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission released a report in November of twenty nineteen stating that a bloom of red tide had been observed in southwest Florida and that they had received reports of fish kills as well. All harmful algal blooms have been reported at times in every US coastal state. They occur nearly every summer along Florida's Gulf coast. There, the species that most often causes the problem is Corennia brevis,
a microscopic organism with a massive potential for destruction. To distinguish it from other varieties of red tidek brevis blooms are called Florida red tide. According to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, cab brevist is found in the waters off of Florida year round in concentrations of a thousand cells or less per liter of water, but in the summer and early fall, cab Brevis can go wild.
For example, a study by University of South Florida scientists published in these scientific journal Censors describes a July fourteen bloom in which the algae multiplied concentrations of up to twenty million per liter of water in some patches and formed a bloom that spread over thousands of square miles of offshore water. Red tides apparently have been happening along the Florida coast for a long time. Spanish explorers described finding massive fish kills in the fifteen hundreds, and the
phenomenon was first scientifically documented in the eighteen forties. A massive Florida red tide event that started in November of nine lasted roughly a year and killed estimated one billion fish.
What exactly causes Florida red tide events remains a little murky, though A study published by University of Miami scientists in the journal Harmful Algae in December and Yes, there is a whole journal for this suggests that it has to do with fluctuations in the position of the loop current, which is a flow of warm water that travels through the e Gulf of Mexico. Though red tide has gotten a lot of media coverage, it's unclear whether looms are
actually getting any worse. We spoke via email with marine scientist Dr Vince Loveco, a manager of the phytoplankton Ecology program at Marine Laboratory and Zarasoda Florida and Hailey Rutger
Moats content development manager. They explained it's hard to provide a simple answer about the long term trends in red tide frequency, abundance of the algae, size of blooms throughout Florida's history, or long term trends and other features because data collection has changed and improved so much over time. Red tides do a lot of damage. The toxins released by cabe revis can cause massive die offs of fish, shrimp, sponges,
sea urchins, crabs, and sea birds. The toxins can cause sea turtles to swim in circles and lose their coordinations so that they become stranded and die. And creatures as large as manatees may succumb to the poison as well as they eat smaller animals that have ingested the toxins. And even people, particularly those with emphysema and asthma, can be harmed by red tide as coastal INDs blow airborne toxins inland as far as a mile or about one
and a half kilometers. Folks with lung sensitivities are advised to avoid red tied areas. So can something be done? To stop red tides or at least control them. As of yet, nobody's come up with a solution. Love Cohen Rector said, Corenia brevist occurs naturally in the Gulf of Mexico, and there is no tried and true way to completely
remove the algae and its impacts without potentially harming gulf ecosystems. However, we are studying smaller scale control and mitigation methods that may benefit limited area waterways, such as closed canals in red tide affected coastal communities. Researchers are exploring some possible methods for red tied mitigation, such as living docks covered with filter feeding animals and oz nation equipment that could
remove red tide from limited areas of water. The use of K brevast killing compounds from seaweed or other organisms that would act as parasites on them are other possible remedies being evaluated. Today's episode was written by Patrick J. Kiger and produced by Tyler Clay. Brain Stuff is production
of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more in this and lots of other topics, visit our home planet, how Stuff Works dot com and for more podcasts for my Heart Radio visit the heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.