| "Current research has shown that red tides will not simply go away." | |
| Tabitha Stadler, Rookery Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve |
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In January, the public received access to real-time beach information, including data about the presence of red tides being collected at eight beaches in Collier County, Florida. The county's participation in collecting data for a regional Beach Conditions Report was the direct result of a local decision-maker workshop on red tides.
"This particular workshop," notes Tabitha Stadler, coastal training coordinator at Rookery Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, "was inspired by the reserve's participation in the Gulf of Mexico Alliance."
In 2004, the governors of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas teamed up with state and local governments and 13 federal agencies to create the Gulf of Mexico Alliance to increase regional collaboration and enhance the ecological and economic health of the Gulf.
"As a member of the Gulf alliance, Rookery Bay's goal is to increase partnerships that protect water quality in the Gulf of Mexico and engage the public in a meaningful way," says Stadler. "The Beach Conditions Report is an extremely valuable tool that will help lessen the impacts of red tide on our beach communities, and is helping provide data to our federal partners who are working to predict and model red tides."
Good Day for the Beach?
The Beach Conditions Report was created in 2006 by the Mote Marine Laboratory in response to public requests for current information about beach conditions.
The system, says its creator Barbara Kirkpatrick, manager of Mote's Environmental Health Program, is designed to provide twice-daily updates about beach conditions, including the presence of red tide algae, dead fish, and respiratory irritation among beachgoers, as well as wind direction and water color and condition.
The reports are collected by lifeguards, county and park personnel, and other beach monitors who input their observations into a wireless handheld computer. The phoned-in data automatically update the website and a telephone system.
The program was piloted in Sarasota County and was later expanded to counties in the north and south. With the addition of Collier County, the Beach Conditions Report covers 23 beaches along the Southwest Florida coast.
The information gathered for the Beach Conditions Report is shared with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which formulates a harmful algal bloom forecast.
Turning the Water Red
While there are thousands of species of microscopic algae that may tint coastal waters a range of colors, only about a dozen cause harmful blooms that can result in massive fish kills, the deaths of marine mammals, contamination of shellfish beds, and human illness. The most common cause of harmful blooms in Florida and the Gulf is Karenia brevis, a marine dinoflagellate that can color the water red and is the source of the common name.
Since the 1840s when official observations of toxic red tides began in Florida, there have been multiple documented red tide episodes with fish kills in the Gulf of Mexico, along the East Coast of Florida, and up to the North Carolina coast.
In addition to causing neurotoxic shellfish poisoning in humans if contaminated shellfish are consumed, the organism also releases aerosolized toxins that can cause respiratory effects, such as coughing, and can be harmful to people suffering from asthma and other chronic lung diseases, says Kirkpatrick.
Billion Dollar Problem
Red tides form in patches that often dissipate just as fast as they accumulate, making predicting an event at a particular beach extremely difficult, says Rick Stumpf, oceanographer for the Center for Coastal Monitoring and Assessment in the NOAA National Ocean Service.
Stadler notes that tourism in Collier County is a billion dollar industry, and a red tide event can affect that, particularly when media accounts make it sound like the entire shoreline is impacted, even though it may be just one beach.
"Red tide is definitely a problem when it occurs, but then so are rip currents when they occur, thunderstorms, stingrays, jellyfish, sunburns," says Stumpf. "There can be a lot of serious environmental concerns that you can face when going to the beach. It's important to put red tides into context."
Community Response
Red tide was one of the issues that rose to the top of the priority list for Southwest Florida and Collier County during a series of workshops hosted in 2005 by the Gulf of Mexico Alliance, which Rookery Bay helped facilitate, says Stadler.
During those workshops, which helped the alliance develop its action plan, "the community had a lot of innovative ideas," Stadler says, "and we wanted to continue to engage with them on alliance issues."
She adds, "Current research has shown that red tides will not simply go away. The question we wanted to address was ‘how can we help the community cope more effectively?'"
Open Dialogue
The reserve received funding from the Florida Coastal Management Program to continue Gulf alliance community workshops, which were kicked off in January of 2007. In addition to red tides, workshops addressed water management with regard to climate change and sustainable development.
What made the workshops so effective, says Lee Yokel, environmental education coordinator for the Gulf of Mexico Alliance, is that the reserve "brought in informed people and set the stage for an honest and open dialogue."
As a result of the red tide workshop, it was the community and county's decision to expand the Beach Conditions Report into Collier County.
This decision is not only helping beach visitors, but it's also enhancing NOAA's forecast ability, says Stumpf. The local information is being built into red tide forecasts and is being used to evaluate forecast information, such as satellite data.
Open to Expansion
"I think the Beach Conditions Report could be expanded to other states, as long as each report meets local communities' needs," notes Kirkpatrick. "The workshop definitely helped. You can't just go cold into a community and say ‘we're here to help.'"
"I would say the workshop was pretty successful," says Stadler. "We had a clear goal to look at a local solution. Not only are we getting the local benefit of helping keep people safe and happy, but we're also contributing a huge data set to the Gulf-wide effort to understand red tide."
She adds, "I think this could be replicated across the Gulf."
To view the Beach Conditions Report, go to www.mote.org/beaches/. For more information, contact Barbara Kirkpatrick at (941) 388-4441, ext. 226. For more information on the red tide workshop, contact Tabitha Stadler at (239) 417-6310, ext. 209, or tabitha.stadler@dep.state.fl.us. For more information on the Gulf of Mexico Alliance, go to www.rookerybay.org/CTP-GOMA.html, or www.supportthegulf.org. You may also contact Lee Yokel at (251) 861-8201, or lyokel@disl.org.
