10/4/18: Florida officials confirm that low to moderate amounts of the algae that
cause red tides have appeared off the state’s Atlantic coastline for the first
time in a decade. This adds to the problem of red tides that have blanketed
the Gulf Coast for ten months, ruining tourism and decimating sea life. (See:
9/11/18.)
____________________
Like
lobsters who don’t know what’s hitting them.
____________________
As the Miami Herald
explains,
Since the weekend, [Atlantic
coast] beach goers have complained about coughing, itchy eyes and other
symptoms linked to red tide. Gerare Rimesso, a neurology researcher at the
University of Miami, said he and his wife fled Fort Lauderdale beach after
about an hour of coughing and runny noses Saturday morning.
“She covered her face with a
shirt. I tried to be a tough guy, but I was too irritated by the end,” he said.
Dead fish began washing ashore
in MacArthur State Park in Palm Beach County on Wednesday where amounts
of Karenia brevis, the algae that cause red tide, have been detected
at amounts high enough to cause fish kills and respiratory distress. State
biologists were sent to investigate the kills. County beaches have been closed
since the weekend.
Pollution flowing into coastal waters from farms and
businesses, and higher ocean temperatures, a result of climate change, mean
conditions for the spread of red tides are increasingly favorable. The Florida
Gulf Coast has had at least one red tide “bloom” every year since 1994. This
year the state also saw a “massive blue-green algae bloom on Lake Okeechobee.”
Or, as one Naples resident put it,
“The Florida we know is
ruined [emphasis added, unless otherwise noted]. That’s our new reality and
people are living it in this beach town.” Naples beaches are known as some of
the state’s best for their tidy white sands and pristine waters, but the toll
of the toxic red tide invasion is relentless….
The ocean waters are pools of
dark brown muck.
Dead crabs and other sea life
litter the sands.
Oh, the stench!
You can’t swim. There’s not a
soul in the water.
The usually crowded beach is
mostly deserted, except for the few who come to sun, to wait for the
sunset—test the waters, so to speak—and also to document what happens when government
enacts bad environmental policy. A videotape of a pod of dolphins struggling
in dark waters too close to shore near the pier makes The Naples Daily News. It makes you very mad.
If you sit for long on the sand you begin to experience
trouble breathing, the resident adds. You can’t stand the smell, even with a
thick beach towel covering your nose and mouth. Nor do you or your family feel
like eating the picnic you brought to the beach. You absolutely don’t want your
children going in the water or picking up dead crabs along the shore.
“You have to witness the environmental destruction to believe
it,” he explains finally.
But, hey, there’s good news!
For the last eight years, Florida Republicans have been busy
cutting back “unnecessary” environmental regulations.
*
IF WE TOOK HURRICANES 101 and paid attention, we know the
season for Atlantic storms is late summer, when ocean waters are warmest. We
know if you increase the ocean temperatures (a.k.a. climate change) you turn
the people along the coasts of the United States (not to mention round the
world) into the proverbial lobsters in the pot, who don’t know what’s hitting
them.
As scientists have predicted, warmer air means more moisture
remains suspended in the atmosphere. That means hurricanes, when they come,
dump more rainfall. The two worst storms for rainfall – trillions of gallons – recorded
in the last seventy years were Hurricane Harvey in 2017 and Hurricane Florence
in 2018.
As Newsweek
reported recently, “heavy precipitation events,” have increased
across most of the United States. The Northwest saw a 71% percent increase in
such events between 1958 and 2012. The Midwest was hit with 37% greater
frequency, the Southeast 27% more often.
Plus, we have red tides!
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Fun at the beach! |
