Red tide, and the fish it kills, slam into Anna Maria Island
Murky brown waves quietly washed dead fish onto empty Anna Maria Island beaches on Monday.
Waters in both the Gulf of Mexico and Sarasota Bay that are usually bright blue and clear were brown and green. The unmistakeable smell of dead, rotting fish corpses filled the island air. The beaches, typically packed with people and dotted with beach chairs and umbrellas, were empty save a few people out for a morning run.
But the red tide didn’t scare away everyone.
Tyler Hart drove 15 hours from North Carolina on Saturday to spend time shark fishing off Anna Maria Island’s Gulf beaches. Just after sunrise Monday morning, he set up his gear at Cortez Beach.
“I didn’t have a clue it was here,” Hart said of the red tide conditions keeping him from getting into the water.
To Hart, 24, Monday’s beach conditions looked better than they did Sunday, but dead fish were still washing ashore.
“It’s kind of devastating to see all these fish dead,” Hart said.
But the red tide is expected to get worse on beaches in Manatee County, according to a forecast by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. According to the NOAA report issued Monday, the respiratory irritation level was “low” on Monday but expected to jump to “high” by Tuesday.
On Coquina Beach, a tractor drove up and down the shoreline around 8 a.m., clearing the sand. At a nearby boat ramp, Manatee County crews shoveled dead fish from the Intracoastal Waterway into a front end loader.
Dead fish were found on beaches stretching from the north end of Longboat Key to Manatee Public Beach in Holmes Beach to the Anna Maria Bayfront Park on Monday. Families turned away almost immediately at the sight of the beach conditions.
The city of Holmes Beach is looking to clean up their beaches quickly.
City officials announced they are working with Manatee County Public Works and Waste Pro to ensure beaches affected by red tide are cleaned. Dumpsters for red tide waste disposal only will be placed at 30th Street, 33rd Street, 36th Street, 46th Street, 67th Street and 71st Street.
The city is also asking for volunteers looking to assist with clean up efforts to contact Holmes Beach Code Enforcement at 941-708-5804 ext. 247 or 249. Materials for clean up will be provided.
Kristin Couch and her husband drove from Plant City and were on Manatee Public Beach on Monday to celebrate, thinking the red tide had not made it so far north.
“I thought it was going to be just in Sarasota,” Couch said. “That’s a shame.”
Couch checked beach conditions on Friday, but realized she should have checked them again on Sunday.
“I’m not swimming in this,” Couch said.
Mote Marine Laboratory reports beach conditions on their website. The latest update for Coquina Beach and Manatee Beach conditions were Monday at 3 p.m. and Monday at 3:01 p.m., respectively. A condition report for Coquina Beach showed moderate water color, thick red drift, moderate respiratory irritation, and heavy dead fish conditions. A report for Manatee Beach included dark water color, some drift, moderate respiratory irritation, and heavy dead fish.
The algae bloom that causes red tide, known as Karenia brevis, reached Sarasota County last week after seemingly creeping north along Florida’s Gulf coast. Even the acclaimed beaches of Siesta Key had brown water and dead fish lined its shore.
Red tide has been blamed for the deaths of thousands of fish, along with manatees, sea turtles, and more marine life.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission reported very low background concentrations of the algae in two water samples collected from Manatee County, according to a report released Friday afternoon. The next red tide report is scheduled to be released Wednesday.
The Anna Maria Island Chamber of Commerce has been directing businesses and callers with questions about beach conditions to Mote’s website, said chamber president Terri Kinder.
Kinder said some of the businesses on the island are telling them guests scheduled to come down soon and months down the road are asking questions about red tide.
“We’re telling them we’re fortunate to have Mote Marine to check the conditions,” Kinder said. “They’re the experts.”
Social media is also helping the chamber spread the word.
“It’s a great thing because we’re able to give them realistic information,” Kinder said.
The impacts from red tide are a concern, Kinder said, but they’ve been fortunate so far that she said they’re “fine.”
The Quinn family had just finished breakfast at the Anna Maria Island Cafe on Manatee Public Beach, and walked down to the shore to check out the red tide’s progression.
“The beach was packed yesterday but as soon as it approached, whoosh, people cleared out, “ Tom Quinn said.
His son, Michael, recalled that they were in the water and it was still clear and green, he said. But then they saw the rust colored water approach them It didn’t make him cough, but it did make his grandfather start coughing. “
“I thought it was the new spray sunscreen that I had put on,” Larry Quinn said.
The family has been coming to the island, a regular vacation spot, for 16 years, and were disappointed.
But determined to make the most of their week-long trip, the family was headed to Robinson Preserve for the first time.
“We’re here all the time,” Tracy Quinn said.
Patrick Gaffney, 20, was one of the few along the beach by City Park in the city of Anna Maria who attempted to wade into the water on Monday morning.
“It’s a very different color, more brownish,” Gaffney said. “You can also see debris in the water, not sure if it’s dead fish.”
Despite it being his first visit to the island, it was not what he expected.
Like many others, the 20-year-old from Kansas City had just arrived for a family vacation and knew nothing about the red tide.
Auden Bordessoule, visiting from France, was walking along the beach with her family near the Sandbar restaurant and also asked what was causing the dead fish. They just arrived Sunday, she said.
Disappointingly, the beach didn’t look like it did when they visited 10 years ago.
At the Rod and Reel Pier, Jimmy Malfese, who manages the dock, had been fielding calls all morning about the red tide.
“I told people, ‘If you don’t want to see dead fish, then don’t come out here,’” Malfese said.
According to Malfese, the red tide had not hit really hit the pier until about 4:30 p.m. Sunday. The dead fish soon followed, he explained, and had already begun to line the beach and could be visible floating in the water along both sides of the pier.
Malfese has been working at the Rod and Reel for about eight years but remembers the worse red tide he ever saw was in 2005.
“If you lived on a canal in Anna Maria, you couldn’t go outside your house,” he said.
Like most people, he is hoping this red tide won’t be as bad and long-lasting.
“Now we have the wind blowing in our favor,” Malfese said. “That’s been a blessing.”
The direction of wind was making the smell fairly undetectable to anyone standing on the pier. But out in the parking lot was a different story. There like many other places on the island, the pungent smell was like a slap in the face when you get out of your car
“The wind direction is certainly playing a role in how it smells,” Bay News 9 meteorologist Josh Linker said.
For days the area has had east wind flow, but in the afternoon winds shift to an on-shore flow which could explain why the smell produced by the red tide can seem worse as the day wears on. Later in the week, the prevailing winds are forecast to switch and will coming from the southwest making the potential to keep the smell around longer.
Malfese fears this change will be bad for Rod and Reel Pier.
A change in direction of the wind is not enough to predict if the red tide will continue to travel north, Linker cautioned.
Across the Cortez Bridge, on the mainland, several boats sat docked outside of the Cortez Kitchen and Swordfish Grill and Tiki Bar. John Banyas, owner of the restaurants and Cortez Bait and Seafood, stood on one of the boats. He said the red tide has impacted some of his work, as the boats were tied up for now.
While his inshore boats are “taking the beating” from the conditions, Banyas said the offshore boats are OK. The restaurants are open for business.
“Still rocking and rolling,” Banyas said.
He said he doesn’t think this patch of red tide is going anywhere anytime soon.
Bobby Woodson, owner of Tide Tables, just before the Cortez Bridge, said they haven’t felt the brunt of the red tide.
“There’s no fish in our marina and you can detect a slight odor but so far we’ve been very fortunate,” Woodson said. “So the best thing we can hope for is that it dissipates.”
Woodson said he’s gotten questions about whether red tide impacts the fish served in the restaurant, and he tells them it does not.
“Our fish are caught between 150 to 200 miles offshore,” he said. “We wouldn’t sell tainted fish.”
This story was originally published August 6, 2018 at 10:38 AM.