Nitrogen and phosphorus from a variety of sources – including fertilizer run off – can feed the organism. Red tide feeds itself, making it a tricky algae, Rutger said. MOTE has seen periods of high red tide counts before in its Sarasota testing area, in 2005. “We don’t have the same data set for the last 20 years.” “It’s hard because the data collection methods get better,” she said. Rutger said the duration of this red tide is notable, but not necessarily the first one to endure this long. He’s hoping enough snook could swim south, away from the red tide, to survive and spawn. The kill-off of spawning snook wasn’t an “insignificant number,” he said. “Fishing has been terrible.”ĭaniel Andrews, a fishing captain and co-founder of Captains for Clean Water, said the fish kills and red tide are hitting all the water-based industries in the area most affected. “I’ve canceled quite a few trips,” he said. ![]() There have been no fish kills and no positive tests for red tide.Ĭaptains like Morris have been trying to avoid the red tide areas – but fishing hasn’t been good elsewhere, either. Rae Burns, environmental technician from the Town of Fort Myers Beach, said Fort Myers Beach is in the clear. The red tide stretched from Captiva to Sarasota, but its epicenter is Boca Grande to Gasparilla. “That fish has lived through so many red tide events, and this one wiped it out.” “I’ve never seen a Goliath in red tide,” he said. A fish of that size could be 20 years old. He even saw what he estimated to be a 400 to 500-pound Goliath grouper, a victim of the red time bloom. I’ve never seen anything remotely in the ball park,” Morris said. Many of the dead fish were laden with eggs to produce the next generation. What was even worse was that snook, a popular sport fish, are in spawning season. The fish had tried swimming back out to the Gulf to escape the bloom – but it caught up to them, he said. ![]() On June 21, Morris went back out to the pass to find an eight-mile line of dead snook. Red tide and fish kills go hand in hand, and what he was seeing near Little Gasparilla Pass wasn’t “too crazy,” he said. Morris said he first saw the fish kill start around June 10, and didn’t think much about it. A Goliath grouper, surrounded by other smaller fish, floats dead in Charlotte Harbor June 27.
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