Another Bradenton neighborhood hit with red tide as dead shark, fish float in creek behind homes

Nowadays, having waterfront property has started to become a bad thing in Manatee County.

Disastrous red tide has massacred hundreds of thousands of marine life over the last several weeks up and down Florida’s southwest coast. It rolled in to Manatee County nearly two weeks ago and hasn’t showed much signs of slowing down.

It hit the beaches first but now in the past week, the carnage has started to flow into creeks and canals in neighborhoods off the beach.

First, it was the Coral Shores neighborhood along Cortez Road.

Now, it has arrived in the Whitfield/Bayshore Gardens neighborhood via Bowlees Creek, which feeds into Sarasota Bay.

The creek runs behind homes on 69th Avenue West, on either side of U.S. 41.

Resident Mark Burke noticed the change late Wednesday morning when he said he went out to the creek in his backyard to find hundreds of fish jumping out of the water, trying to survive the toxic algae bloom.

Within an hour, Burke said, they were all dead.

“In a matter of an hour there was nothing but dead fish,” he said. “It was scary. It was like the end of the world, seeing all these fish flipping out to being belly up almost instantly.”

Just a few houses down, Burke’s neighbor, Sarah VanderBent, found something even more disturbing than all the dead fish on Thursday.

A dead shark.

“I thought it was a manatee from the bloated stomach,” VanderBent said. “But when I got a better look I realized it was a shark. I’ve never seen a shark in this canal.

She also said she’s never seen anything like this in the last six years she’s lived in her house. Burke said the same thing.

“We are animals lovers so for us this is pretty horrible,” VanderBent said. “It’s super sad. Something’s got to be done about it.”

“I’m born and raised in Bradenton,” Burke said. “And I’ve never seen anything like this. And there’s nothing you can do but watch them die, it really is such a shame.”

One of the biggest problems about the algae bloom, known as Karenia brevis, is that no one — not even scientists and researchers — can predict when it is going to end. On top of that, conditions change daily with the winds and currents, so one day residents think it’s getting better, only for it to come back with a vengeance 24 hours later.

For example, On Wednesday, Anna Maria Island beaches saw a reprieve of the bloom, with clearer water and no dead fish on the shore. But on Thursday, things started to look grimmer.

VanderBent said that luckily, her and her family haven’t experienced any respiratory problems since the grisly scene behind her home worsened over the day.

“But that may still come.”

VanderBent contacted the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission about the dead shark but they told her it appeared too decomposed to perform any tests.

Now residents are left asking: Who is going to clean it up?

Crews have been hard at work over the last several days to clean up county beaches, but there has been an issue on who would clear canals.

On Wednesday, Manatee County government released a list of those who would contract to clear local canals of the unsightly and smelly fish.

But some local fisherman are saying that people are holding off on using the service because the tide can come back in and the fish would be there all over again. Many residents are opting to wait until they can be sure red tide is over.

And everyone in the Whitfield and Bayshore neighborhoods — and far beyond — can only hope that day comes soon.

This story was originally published August 17, 2018 at 6:21 AM.