What researchers want to do now is anticipate. On average, really severe events happen every 10 years or so, she notes, and though they sometimes occur back-to-back, her team hasn’t seen “a lot of evidence to suggest that they’re getting a lot more severe.” Hubbard says she can’t really say whether blooms have gotten worse over time. Heil says it’s “potentially contributing” to the bloom. In the spring, a leak in the former Piney Point phosphate plant in Florida caused more than 200 million gallons of wastewater to be released into Tampa Bay. Other forms of human-made pollution may have also had an impact. Climate change didn’t cause red tide, but there is a chance - as with so many other naturally occurring phenomena - that it’s had an impact. Monitoring since the 1950s shows that severe red tide events are often interspersed with more mild blooms. The first blooms that were described in Florida date back to the 1840s, according to Hubbard. "So, theoretically, these blooms should be susceptible to climate change.” “Florida is very susceptible to climate change because we’re subtropical," Heil says. It’s a question they’re currently studying. How does climate change and pollution affect red tide?Īs to whether climate change has impacted Florida red tide, scientists don’t have a definitive answer. Hubbard has seen red tide-affected fish on the brink of death but not yet dead they roll over in the water, flailing and gasping for air. Red tide can affect fish in a variety of ways, but it’s the brevetoxins that the algae species creates that infect the animal’s central nervous system. But this summer, it’s the staggering amount of dead fish that has surprised tourists and locals alike. For those who live in southwest Florida, some kind of red tide is to be expected almost every year, as predictably as summer thunderstorms and hurricane season.
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