Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Red Tide Research Gets a Funding Boost

Dead fish on the beach during the summer of 2018.
STEPHEN SPLANE / WUSF PUBLIC MEDIA
Dead fish on the beach during the summer of 2018.

While red tide algal blooms have occurred off the coast of western Florida since before the state was heavily developed – the earliest accounts of its presence date back to the 1880s, and J.N. Ding Darling himself wrote about a massive red tide bloom in the 1940s – current residents of this part of the state are unfortunately well-aware of just how harmful a red tide bloom can be.

The most recent, massive bloom lasted about a year and a half, and caused incredible devastation to marine life all up and down the southwest Florida coast, and negatively impacted our tourist economy. And while these blooms are naturally occuring, their severity and persistence in more modern times seems to indicatethat land-based nutrient pollution, like what’s flowing into the Gulf from the Caloosahatchee River, must at least be exacerbating the problem. 

But, researchers say that there is not conclusive proof of a connection between the two. And now, thanks to legislation signed last week by Governor Ron DeSantis, there’s going to be a funding boost to expand research into the causes, and impacts, of red tide– and to try to develop technologies and approaches to control and mitigate its impacts going forward. It creates what’s called The Florida Red Tide Mitigation and Technology Development Initiative. It's a multi-year partnership between the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission’s Fish and Wildlife Research Institute, and Mote Marine Laboratory. We discuss this new partnership, and what lies ahead in terms of research, with Dr. Michael Crosby, Mote's President. 

Copyright 2019 WGCU

Julie Glenn is the host of Gulf Coast Live. She has been working in southwest Florida as a freelance writer since 2007, most recently as a regular columnist for the Naples Daily News. She began her broadcasting career in 1993 as a reporter/anchor/producer for a local CBS affiliate in Quincy, Illinois. After also working for the NBC affiliate, she decided to move to Parma, Italy where she earned her Master’s degree in communication from the University of Gastronomic Sciences. Her undergraduate degree in Mass Communication is from the University of Missouri at Kansas City.
Mike Kiniry is producer of Gulf Coast Live, and co-creator and host of the WGCU podcast Three Song Stories: Biography Through Music. He first joined the WGCU team in the summer of 2003 as an intern while studying Communication at Florida Gulf Coast University.