Manatee County has a new tool to get seaweed, red tide dead fish from beach waters
For his work in leading efforts to rapidly clean up tons of rotting sea life resulting from red tide, Carmine DeMilio received the first-ever Outstanding Contribution to Tourism Award last year.
DeMilio, Manatee County’s park operations manager, on Thursday briefed the Manatee County Tourist Development Council on a piece of new equipment in the county’s toolbox, a skimmer boat for seaweed cleanup and removal of debris from the next red tide bloom.
DeMilio played a video of the new equipment, a Weedoo aquatic weed harvester, cleaning up seaweed at the Kingfish Boat Ramp in Holmes Beach.
The skimmer boat can also be used to clean ponds and inland waterways, which are not immune to die-offs from red tide.
During the severe red tide bloom in 2018, county workers removed 450,000 pounds of dead and rotting sea life, all of which went to the county landfill.
In 2021, when the county faced another red tide bloom, DeMilio’s staff took 200,000 pounds of debris to the landfill. The cleanup was aided by winds that kept much of the red tide offshore, and by positioning county equipment which could move to quickly remove the stinking mess.
Tourist development council members were appreciative of this latest innovation, and of efforts by county staff to keep beach parks and restrooms clean. On a typical holiday weekend, county staff remove 45,000 pounds of trash.
It’s all part of keeping the beaches attractive to encourage visitors to return year after year, said Elliott Falcione, executive director of the Bradenton Area Convention and Visitors Bureau.
Tourism council member Ed Chiles wondered whether all that seaweed and red tide debris couldn’t be composted, rather than taken to the landfill, to enrich farm land.
“It could go to building soil,” Chiles said, while acknowledging that the salt content could be problematic.
“Unfortunately, we are going to have more red tide. It’s a naturally occurring organism,” Chiles said.
In other business Thursday, Anne Wittine of Research Data Services presented some encouraging tourism figures:
▪ In April, the Bradenton area reported a record 99,900 visitors, a big jump from the last pre-COVID April in 2019, when there were 63,900 visitors.
This April 32,270 of those visitors came from Florida, 25,770 came from the Midwest, 21,880 came from the Northeast, 7,790 came from the Southeast, and 5,090 came from Europe.
▪ Despite consumer concerns about the price of gas and the economy, 76% of those surveyed by Research Data Services said they were optimistic about their personal health, and 64% said they are planning summer trips.
