Toxic alga "red tide" spotted in waters near Miami

By Zachary Fagenson

MIAMI (Reuters) – Toxic seaweeds known as red tides have been discovered on beaches near Miami, Miami-Dade County officials said on Thursday, a rare fatal phenomenon on the east coast. of the Gulf of Mexico. to fish and irritate humans.

County Mayor Carlos Gimenez said the public beaches would be closed north of Haulover Inlet, an area marked by isolated green spaces, a marina and a nudist beach on a barrier island located at about 25 km north of downtown Miami.

Algae can emit toxins that irritate the skin of swimmers and are carried away by the wind, causing coughing and wheezing. Toxins can kill schools of fish that end up washing on the beach. Eating badly harvested shells and affected by a red tide can make people sick.

The bloom that lasts several months off the coast of Florida this year, the worst in more than a decade, has killed many manatees, stranded hundreds of sea turtles and left Tampa officials in Naples with piles of fish rotting to clear beaches.

Red tides occur naturally in the gulf off the west coast of Florida when microscopic algae multiply in dense concentrations, but scientists have documented them at least eight times since the early 1950s, according to the conservation commission Florida wildlife and fish.

"This tends to happen every 10 or 15 years and will be visible on the beaches for a while and will disappear quickly," said Larry Brand, professor of marine biology at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. University of Miami.

Floating near the largest city of the state and its main tourism engine, unicellular organisms have put local leaders on the alert.

Sugar cane and central state dairy farms have impeded the natural flow of water into Florida's wetlands, causing vast expanses of stagnant water filled with nutrients on which algae grow. Brand said.

State scientists also found red tide algae higher on the east coast of Palm Beach County in late September.

(Report by Zachary Fagenson in Miami, additional report and Jonathan Allen's writing in New York, edited by Joseph Ax and Jonathan Oatis)