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Red Tide, Decoded: Why It Isn't Random, and How to Track It · How To Protect The Ocean

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  Today we're gonna be talking about red tide.
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  And I know it's it's a tough battle.
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  You may not know what red tide is.
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  You've probably heard a lot of the things,
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  but I'm just gonna get a a bit of a summary from someone I spoke to recently.
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  Actually it was Monday's episode with Adam Langley.
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  He said one time he was on the beach and him and his wife are on the beach,
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  and all of a sudden, you know,
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  without any warning, people were just starting to like,
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  you know, you didn't really smell anything,
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  but suddenly people started to cough around them.
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  And people like grabbing their towels and just kind of leaving the area.
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  And and they didn't really know what it was at the time.
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  They just thought, hey, like if everybody's coughing,
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  it's not just one particular individual,
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  it's it's a a number of different individuals.
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  And then more and more people are starting to cough.
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  It's not necessarily that they have asthma.
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  Probably people who have asthma probably feel it a little bit more,
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  obviously, than others. But then you start to cough you're like,
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  something's not right. Like it doesn't smell of anything,
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  but there's something that's affecting my breathing,
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  and I'm not gonna stay in this area.
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  So I'm gonna leave the beach. Beautiful day on the beach.
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  I'm gonna leave it and I'm gonna get out of there,
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  maybe call the authorities, be like something is going on.
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  That's red tide. And a lot of times it's not it's not random.
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  It can be trackable. And there's actually a free tool that you can tell that
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  can tell you before it even happens,
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  and before you even leave the house.
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  So you don't have to go through that and you don't have to worry about going
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  on the beach when there's a red tide.
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  We're gonna talk all about what a red tide is,
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  why you should know about it, and that the fact is that people are doing
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  a lot of work to stop it from happening.
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  And there is a way to stop it from happening more often.
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  than it has and I think that's the that's the important part of
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  of where we're talking about here.
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  Because when we hear red tide or what what scientists called harmful algal blooms
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  or habs, we see this happening on a regular basis,
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  Because there is a specific algae called carinia brevis,
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  and it blooms in warm coastal waters and produces a toxin known as brevitoxin,
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  which is the toxin that you're pro like that people are probably
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  Smelling in the air. You know,
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  the wind and the waves, they carry that toxin into the air,
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  which is why you start coughing on the beach with no visible sign that that really
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  there's anything wrong, other than people coughing on the beach when nobody should
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  be, Because that's not a normal thing that happens.
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  Now it's worse for people with asthma or any kind of respiratory conditions,
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  but it can affect anyone standing close enough to the water or even in the water,
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  Now, in 2018 to 2019, the numbers like were huge.
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  And the losses were huge. They lost $2.7 billion over
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  a year of disruption, To it, and and that is not something that became like
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  a rare occurrence like it normally did,
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  but it's it's something that's really,
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  really bad. why is this happening more often than not?
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  Carina Brevis, this this algae is naturally occurring in the Gulf of Mexico
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  in the Atlantic.
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  And in between 2017 and 2019, the southwest and southeast parts of Florida were
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  hit pretty much the worst they've ever been hit before.
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  Now, there have to be specific conditions for Karina Brevis
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  to really become overpopulated,
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  which which makes the red tide.
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  You'll see start to see in the water a little bit of a reddish tint color,
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  like a tan color or a rust color in the water.
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  But for sometimes it's really difficult to tell until it's too late.
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  Or until you start to feel that.
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  Now, here's the thing. There needs to be like the right amount of wind
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  to bring the like a lot of Karina brevis together to create the red tide.
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  There needs to be heat in the water to I guess be hospitable
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  to the Karina brevist because it needs heat.
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  Heat is is helpful. But then it needs something else which can be controlled.
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  And we talked about it yesterday's episode and we talked about it the day before.
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  It's all about nutrients. There's specific nutrients that when fed to phytoplankton,
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  which is what these carina brevis are,
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  they will bloom like crazy. And if you get the right amount of mix of
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  all three C sub C temperature,
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  wind that brings them all together,
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  and then feed them nutrients, you get a massive red tide.
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  If that happens over and over and over again,
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  so we we know we've seen high temperatures.
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  We know the winds are kind of gathering a little bit.
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  And we know nutrients in Florida over the past five years,
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  maybe more, probably eight to ten years,
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  have been flowing into the river systems a lot more.
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  Right. So I want to just kind of give you a picture of essentially what's happening,
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  So the bloom has always been there,
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  but it's the freshwater discharges that come down from the Casalahache River.
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  In Florida, carrying like decades of nitrogen phosphorus from
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  the Kissimmee Basin and Lake Okeechobee.
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  I always say Okechibi, but it's Okeechobee.
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  And that's what we know happens.
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  So all that nitrogen phosphorus,
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  which are the nutrients that help animal or plants' cells grow,
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  like these plankton, these these phytoplankton,
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  So you follow from Lake Okeechobee,
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  And you know that.
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  It there's nutrients in there because there's a lot of industry along that area,
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  And that industry, even below it and above it,
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  dumps their waste, like we talked a little bit yesterday.
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  And for a while, that waste had to meet a certain number.
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  And that number has now changed to best practices.
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  So instead of hitting a certain,
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  like you have to be below a certain number in nitrogen,
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  so ammonia, nitrate, nitrite.
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  And phosphorus, now you can pretty much put it whatever you want and say,
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  hey, we're following best practices.
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  We know companies, and there's a lot of sugar companies that like
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  big sugars known in Florida. There's a lot of sugar companies out there,
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  and we know that they're very important to Florida's economy,
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  but they will try and get away with pretty much anything.
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  Right. And so the fact is,
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  is that once the state said, hey,
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  best manager practices is great,
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  you know, the
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  Difference in the phosphorus amounts,
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  where before when there was regulation,
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  they were at about 25, Legal minimum.
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  And they grew to about 55%. So that's there's a there's a difference there,
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  There's a a huge difference in the numbers.
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  So phosphorus grew ~ in availability,
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  nitrogen grew in availability.
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  And then what happens is because Lake Okeechobee is dammed,
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  once the spring rains come, it will eventually fill up.
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  And managers, water water managers,
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  have to release this water that is full of excess phosphorus
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  and ex excess nitrogen. So then it'll grow down the Kissmi Basin
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  and it'll it'll flow down the Kalo Sachi River and it'll go into the Gulf
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  of Mexico or the Atlantic.
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  Right, so these are the southwest Gulf of Mexico,
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  Southeast Atlantic areas. And then what happens as those nutrients feed those Carina
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  bevis, like these red tide forming plant plant cells,
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  you get a red tide.
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  the fact is that because the nitrogen and phosphorus,
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  aren't meeting what was met before,
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  we are getting more red tides because there's increased cease temperature
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  and the winds are changing a lot more and they're a lot stronger.
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  So they bring this phytoplankton in,
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  which is naturally occurring. They just bring them into groups where
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  you get to that, And I think this is where I keep telling people that
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  we can control.
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  The amount of times we get red tide by controlling what feeds them.
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  We can't necessarily control sea temperature at this point unless
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  we reduce our carbon and greenhouse gas output,
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  which is obviously a lot harder than ever.
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  But nitrogen can be controlled locally or by state.
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  That can be controlled. I've worked in environmental consulting before.
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  I worked in with a wastewater company where we
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  looked, we would do measurements to make sure that they're following
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  the regulations. And it would be,
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  you know, provincial or state and federal that would be looking at these
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  and they would be reviewing them to make sure they're under.
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  And if they go above, you know,
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  they the government works with them to say,
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  hey, you need to keep this down because they had to follow the law.
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  That was part of the regulation.
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  So I think that the thing is here where everybody's like,
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  well, we get more red tide. Like we're seeing,
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  you know, the coast of Florida at a certain times like disgusting
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  and there's there's dead animals everywhere and sometimes sea turtles
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  and
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  And manatees and dolphins and and fish everywhere.
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  They're just dead. It's disgusting.
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  It's gross. I'm never, I don't want to go there.
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  How we can't even control this.
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  We can control it. That's the funny thing.
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  It's not a random thing, It's not a mystery that strikes without a pattern.
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  Like we know what's happening.
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  We know how to stop it. We know how to starve this animal from growing
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  to a point where it becomes a red tide.
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  And I think that's the big turn in this story.
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  That's the thing that.
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  can help us bring the red tide anxiety down a little bit.
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  I know it helps me because I know what needs to be done.
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  Right. I know that if we start to get governments on point and say,
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  hey, we need to protect our coastlines,
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  our water quality is going to crap because we haven't been holding companies
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  and industries who who put out this stuff.
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  And it's not necessarily like it's bad stuff.
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  Like they provide products that we use.
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  So it's it's hard to say that we're against them.
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  I don't want to vilify them, but we need to make sure that they their point sources
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  that come out have to fall with it below a number.
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  And that's where these wastewater engineers kind of do all this modeling
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  to make sure that if everybody stays within a certain range,
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  then our system will be fine. That's all it takes.
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  It's money, yes. It's money worth spending,
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  I guarantee you. I think that's where.
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  A lot of people just don't realize that it's this is what happens.
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  this is how we change. And I think if you go back to yesterday,
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  where the red tide is like the the dramatic visible symptom of that same excess
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  nitrogen story that we talked about what I talked about,
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  how coastal environments, coastal habitats like mangroves,
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  marshes are the are nature's kidneys.
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  Healthy coastal wetlands will help filter nitrogen out of the water.
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  But like just to go back to it,
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  the big sugar wanted to remove some Everglades to put in a new plant.
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  The Everglades are that coastal habitat that removes the excess nitrogen.
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  So instead of like emptying right into the Everglades,
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  they empty out into a river system that goes right into the Gulf.
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  Makes no sense. And so there's ways that we can actually figure out
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  how to change our water quality.
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  Now, in the meantime, there is a bloom tracker.
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  There is a red tide bloom tracker.
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  So if you are in Florida or you are in an area where you want to go to the beach,
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  you want to make sure you don't have to be subjected to that.
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  Maybe you have some asthma problems or respiratory problems,
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  or you just don't want to go there when it's going be nasty.
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  There is a beach conditions reporting system that,
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  People have if you're on the Gulf Coast.
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  And so there are ways you can find out.
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  You can just track this. You can look it up.
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  I'll try and look it and put a the link in the show notes that you can find.
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  But for now, you can look at that.
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  But really, like this is where we elect government officials that will promise
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  to make sure they hold industry accountable to ensure that we are
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  not putting excess nitrogen in the water.
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  that's pretty much what it is.
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  We have the
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  knowledge.
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  We have the system to put in place.
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  We have the regulation. It's just a matter of keeping industries
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  to that regulation and not giving them what they want in terms of they don't have
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  to spend extra money on making sure that they can put that into place
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  and they less headache for them.
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  But no, ~ sorry, it's a headache for you,
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  but it's life to us. That's really what it comes down to,
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  Businesses do not run the world.
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  They think they want to, they think they can,
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  but it really is the people. We are the people.
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  We need to hold them accountable through government.
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  Government needs to hold accountable.
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  Elect the people who hold them accountable.
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  That's what we need to do. That's my that's that's my my call to action
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  for you today. ~ and especially in the US where Florida is located,
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  there's a important elections coming up.
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  This is where you make those elections count.
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  I know there's like a bigger picture here for a lot of people from
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  a federal perspective, but think about locally of what's happening to
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  you and make sure that those ~ state,
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  whether they're Senate.
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  Or Congress people, they are looking out for what's local for you and not what's,
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  you know, federally always for the the the overall country that may not
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  be in your interest, Whether you're on one side or the other,
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  this is still nature. This is still where you live.
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  You want to make sure ~ you are living in a healthy coastal area so
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  you can enjoy the coast because that's where you want to live,
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  And that's the beauty about living in places like Florida.
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  So, anyway, that's it for the episode today.
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  I would love to hear your comments.
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  If you're watching this on YouTube.
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  Let me know in the comments below if you're watching this or listening to this,
• 13:15
  sorry, on Spotify or Apple or your favorite podcast app.
• 13:19
  Spotify, you can leave a comment,
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  which I love. So please leave a comment.
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  Love to hear what you think. Or if you have a question,
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  love to hear your thoughts. but other than that,
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  you can hit me up on my socials,
• 13:28
  links in the show notes. Thank you so much for joining me on today's episode
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  of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast.
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  Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation.