By the time it’s over, perhaps with the onset of winter, the red tide disaster along Florida’s Gulf Coast looks certain to surpass the awful one of 2006, not merely as the worst in recent memory but perhaps the worst ever. The tolls of killed food and game fish, turtles, manatees and other sea creatures, as well as economic loss in towns that depend on sea commerce and tourism, was staggering before the middle of August, the event’s 11th month.

Consider: As of Aug. 13, the city of Sanibel alone reported its cleanup contractor had removed 310 tons of dead marine life from beaches and other coastal spots. Most of that was done in just two weeks. It was Sanibel where in late July an incoming tide brought ashore a 26-foot whale shark, ebbed and left it beached.

Cleanup was relatively easy, for the toxic fumes made beach air all but impossible to breathe so nobody was around. Deeper inland, vacation towns were virtually deserted, with stores and restaurants closed. Fort Myers was given a modest state grant for marketing to lure tourists back, no joke intended.

FWC executive director Eric Sutton waived rules to let anyone who wants them and can suppress gagging and eye burning to pick up dead fish without worrying about size, bag and possession limits, or closed seasons. That announcement wasn’t kidding either, was it?

No. It specified seriously that sawfish, turtles, manatees, dolphins and whales were not to be removed. Those are protected species. You likely couldn’t stand to sort them out, but Sutton said he had 30-plus biologists on the job. They’re paid to do that.

It isn’t possible for this monthly report to come out timely, so we’ve culled some of the most telling information from everyday news to illustrate how bad it all is.
For instance, about 400 dead or dying sea turtles were collected by the end of July.

A dead manatee drifted into the Cape Coral Yacht Club, a short distance from where local residents and business people were meeting to holler at the Army Corps of Engineers.

The first patches of red tide happened near Sarasota last October — no big deal at first. It’s a naturally occurring bacteriological phenomenon, often annual, usually scattery, seldom severe.

Except there was nothing normal this time. By itself, this red tide event is very bad. It spread from Sarasota northward to the coasts of Manatee, Pinellas and Hillsborough Counties, and south to Charlotte, Lee and Collier. As this report was being prepared, satellite images showed patches of it well west of the shores of mainland Monroe County, which is in Everglades National Park. It didn’t look at all far north of the lower Keys.

Engineers could say the red tide wasn’t their fault, and it wasn’t, but they couldn’t as easily duck responsibility for the neon green algae and other goo flowing down the Caloosahatchee River to the Gulf from Lake Okeechobee. The lake’s water level had to be lowered due to seasonal rains and last September’s hurricane Irma.

The Engineers didn’t cause the high water either, but they run Okeechobee and get the blame by default when things get bad. The high-volume water releases churned up nutrients that had been resting on the bottom.

Billions of gallons of water, loaded with phosphorous and tannin, flushed eastward, stunk up St. Lucie River and the Atlantic where it flowed offshore.

That was very bad, but red tide doesn’t happen on the east coast. Conditions on the Gulf Coast were bad enough for a series of very-veries once the Okeechobee algae — some locals call it “green tide” — arrived to join the red tide.

The observations of Rhett Morris, a Punta Gorda fishing guide, were reported in the Fort Myers Beach Bulletin and Observer. Morris said he first noticed dying fish near Little Gasparilla Pass on June 10 and didn’t think it was so bad.

Not just yet, but 11 days later he went out the same pass and saw a line of dead fish, mostly snook, many of them egg-laden, that he said was 8 miles long.

He saw a huge grouper, too, one he guessed weighed 400 to 500 pounds. Had he ever seen anything like this?

“I’ve been out here 25 years,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything remotely in the ballpark.”

And that was only in mid-June. It’s gotten worse.

Scientists haven’t agreed yet on whether neon green algae had a fueling effect on the red tide, itself an alga, or just made everything worse.

We’re borrowing (and condensing) at some length now from a vivid, visceral Facebook posting by Rosemary Ferreri, an activist in the Southwest Florida Clean Water Movement: She toured the crisis area on the morning of Aug. 16: “As soon as I hit the Sunshine Bridge I noticed there were no boats, not a single one, in the water. That continued all of the way down the coast. Water that used to be a beautiful turquoise blue is now a red brown for as far as the eye can see.

“I started at Venice Beach and worked my way back North. The town was dead, no activity (it is a big tourist destination even in the off season.) Stores were closed and It just felt as if life had just stopped.

“I headed up to Siesta Key. The first sign I saw for the beach said ‘Siesta Key number 1 beach in Florida.’ I walked over a little bridge and as far as I could see in either direction there were no people. My eyes started burning and I started to cough. I covered my mouth with my hand and headed back to my car.

“Next stop was Indian Beach, Sarasota. I turned down a road that said dead end. The smell hit me immediately. The top of my car was down and I was enjoying the sunshine. I hit the dead end and looked to the left and saw there was a little beach next to a house there.

“I got out of the car and almost staggered to the beach. I have smelled a lot of awful things in my life and NOTHING I have ever encountered smelled like this. I kept walking until I hit the beach thinking, Rosemary you are a fool! This is toxic and you should have a mask.

“I stepped down onto the beach and literally stepped into maggots. There were dead fish everywhere. I stooped down to start taking pictures, hoping that I would not lose my balance and fall into this stuff. I had one hand over my mouth and nose and had to just stop breathing to be able to stand the smell.

“I headed to Lido Key Beach. I had to drive through St Armand’s Circle. it was dead. I’ve never seen it not crawling with people. I headed over the John Ringling Causeway and I almost cried. Water that used to be the most incredible turquoise blue was now that same red-brown I had seen on all of my other stops.

“I pulled up in front of an access point to Lido Beach and walked over a short little bridge again. My heart stopped. The smell again was so overwhelming I wanted to run. There were dead rotting fish as far as the eye could see. There was a definitive red/brown line in the ocean and again no turquoise blue water anywhere.”

People are still hollering at the state government, too, for doing a poor job environmental stewardship, under-funding clean water initiatives, being too friendly to the polluting sugar cane industry and so on.

It’s a big issue in state legislative and Congressional elections too. Public interest groups have been forming and performing as if they don’t mean to go away once this episode ends.