Scientists are searching for answers as two different toxins, red tide and algae blooms, pose concerns on both coasts of Florida.
Sea turtles, manatees, dolphins and hundreds of thousands of fish have washed ashore dead on Florida’s Gulf Coast and littered the east coast of the state across the Palm Beaches and Treasure Coast.
Meanwhile, rivers and canals have been stained green with stinky, toxic algae formed from blooms on Lake Okeechobee.
“It’s the perfect storm of a nightmare that won’t seem to go away,” explained boat captain Chris Wittman.
Wittman was born and raised on the San Carlos Bay near Fort Myers. He’s on a mission to save the waterways, ferrying scientists who are searching for the source of pollution that’s killing marine life. They want to know why the toxins are more intense and lasting longer than in past years.
John Cassani is one of the scientists. He works with the non-profit Calusa Waterkeeper, which is teaming up with Florida Gulf Coast University to seek answers.
“To see fish that live to be 70 or 80-years-old killed because of man's actions and mismanagement of habitat is criminal,” Cassani said.
For 50 years, chemicals found in fertilizer has been flowing into Lake Okeechobee through runoff from cattle ranches, orange groves, and septic tanks. The chemicals stay mostly trapped in the lake, but several times a year the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers releases water from the lake into the local rivers that flow to the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf.
Dr. Paul Gray with Audubon Florida described the waterways near Lake Okeechobee: “It's not a sewer but it’s going that direction.”
One political cartoon shows the Herbert Hoover Dike surrounding the lake as a toilet seat.
Meanwhile, scientists have ample proof that red tide grows by feasting on fertilizer contaminating the water.
Gray says the toxins on Lake Okeechobee fertilize the algae. Rains from Hurricane Irma drenched the state, filling the lake with more than 2 million pounds of phosphorus, a chemical in fertilizer. That’s nearly ten times the recommended limit. In the summer of 2018, 90% of the lake was covered in toxic algae.
Projects intended to help the issue are decades from completion.
Gray said: “It's going to take billions of dollars and it is going to take decades but unless we do it this is going to be our life. No one wants to have toxic algae blooms. This is Florida, this is where you come to fish and come to swim and kayak and enjoy the water sports and go to the beach.”
