![]() Florida Youth Conservation Centers Network.Great Florida Birding and Wildlife Trail.Report injured, orphaned or dead manatees.Report fish kills, wildlife emergencies, sightings, etc.Two include: What causes a red tide to end, and do hurricanes impact how a red tide comes to an end? Researchers are out collecting samples constantly to try to solve this question, according to Parsons. But this year there have been weaker winds from changing directions, with southwest winds in recent weeks bringing the bloom closer to shore, Stumpf said.īut the nutrients dumped into the Gulf from Ian have been diluted or used up by now, Stumpf said in an emailed statement. Typically, high pressure will lead to northerly winds in the winter, pushing red tide blooms out. The ongoing red tide is persisting because of the conditions over the last two months, not because of the conditions caused in the weeks after Ian, according to Richard Stumpf, an oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Recent weather hasn’t helped clear Southwest Florida from red tide’s grip. Weather is favorable for a harsher red tide Scientists have to parse through water samples for months before they can get a true “big picture” view of how water quality was affected by Ian, according to Parsons. And that algae gets the first bite of the nutrients, gobbling it up before red tide can. There are some algae species that can tolerate fresh water easier than karenia brevis can. ![]() Red tide has to “wait” until the fresh water (yolk) mixes with Gulf water (egg white). After a storm, there are patches of elevated nutrients, but still plenty of large swaths of normal water. Parsons likens it to a scrambled raw egg in a bowl: The yellowy yolk is the nutrients in polluted freshwater runoff, and the egg white is normal conditions. It has to wait for the water to get saltier. But there’s also a catch: The organism doesn’t like fresh water, so it can’t hunt the nutrients immediately after a storm. Unlike harmless algae species that float around passively, karenia brevis is an efficient hunter: It can swim up and down in the water to access those nutrients, and can swim back up to the light near the surface. Red tide likes to feed on the nutrients mixed into polluted water. From space, chocolate milk-looking water clashed with the turquoise waters of the Gulf of Mexico. ![]() ![]() Millions of gallons of polluted water flowed off the land in the days following Hurricane Ian’s landfall. Making “scrambled eggs” - the pollution question Runoff exiting Southwest Florida tributaries could be seen from space in the days following Hurricane Ian’s landfall as a Category 4 storm. In science, a cause-and-effect relationship happens when you change one thing, and it changes another.īelow: Use the interactive slider to compare red tide before and after Hurricane Ian’s landfall Maybe it’s correlated, but that doesn’t mean it’s causal,” said Dail Laughinghouse, an assistant professor of applied phycology at the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. “It’s easy to make correlations: There’s a hurricane, and then there’s a longer bloom. Red tide would still be flaring up, with or without the hurricane it’s still possible the storm brought red tide closer to shore the present red tide today is likely no longer feeding on pollution dumped by Ian months ago and Ian proved scientists still have much to learn about the relationship between storms and toxic algal blooms. ![]() But what role, if any, did Ian play in the arrival of this latest red tide? We asked experts at three Florida universities, plus two leading state and federal scientists, and their answers boiled down to these main points: Hurricane Ian slammed the state less than three weeks before red tide appeared, leading many to link the storm with the toxic algae’s return. ![]()
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