Red tide, would it put you off?

[Cocobean121]

Hi

We are supposed to be travelling in September and staying our first five nights in clearwater right by the beach, as part of a Fb group for the area I have seen many recent posts talking about red tide, and showing photos of dead fish at pier 60, apparently it’s very smelly!

With all the other uncertainties about actually getting there this year, I’m now wondering if this is the final straw so to speak and whether to cancel.

I don’t know how long these things last for, or how bad it can actually get, I believe it was bad in 2018. We can’t sit on a beach for too long without getting in the sea, so not being able to would be pretty pointless, although looking at the beach cam today there were plenty of people in the water

[State27]

Yes it smells so bad.

[floridafan101]

We were in Anna Maria Island in 2018 and it was pretty awful. No one was swimming and there were dead fish all along the beach. Depressing.

[ChrisS]

The summer of 2018 was exceptional as toxic cyanobacteria regularly released by the Corps of Engineers, from Lake Okeechobee into the Caloosahatchee River, which feeds into the Gulf of Mexico between North Fort Myers and Punta Gorda, clashed with red tide and caused a terrible time for W/SW Fl. Fort Myers Beach closed down, it was a ghost town, nobody visited and some businesses that closed didn't re-open. The stench from rotting marine life was sickening. All manner of marine life died, including a 15 foot whale shark which washed up on Sanibel. We winter on Bokeelia and bar plodging on/off the boat, as the general water quality is questionable our personal choice is not to go in Florida's oceans.

The following years haven't seen such serious issues, red tide remains in the Gulf, but then it always has, and the clean water campaign is strong and whilst we don't go in the oceans thousands happily do so without incident. The red tide situation quickly eases as sea temps drop but nobody can predict red tide Sept movements this far out.

[State27]

The leak from Piney Point is being pinpointed right now for the high and somewhat early red tide issues .


“After the recent State of Emergency issued for Manatee County by Governor Ron DeSantis, experts are reeling over the possibility of an environmental disaster. Hazardous water threatening to be unleashed, not only across Tampa Bay, but other major waterways in our state. It’s a situation that Wittman is all too familiar with.

“It can spur algae blooms, it can enhance or make red tide blooms worse and all of that- as we’ve seen before- has devastating effects on not only the ecology of our water, but also the local economies that are affected by water quality,” says Wittman.

The water within the Piney Point Reservoir has high levels of nutrients- such as phosphorus, nitrogen and ammonia. The exact ingredients those algae blooms feed off o

[tocpe321]

We went in 2019 and I spent some time looking at the Mote Marine Laboratory's site for updates as well as getting loads of information from ChrisS. Thanks Chris!

This is the Mote environmental update page, which contains useful links to Red Tide.


mote/news/environment-updates

[bettycat]

Originally Posted by floridafan101

We were in Anna Maria Island in 2018 and it was pretty awful. No one was swimming and there were dead fish all along the beach. Depressing.

See more...

We were the same, there in AMI in 2018. It was not nice and unfortunately the trip was ruined compared to a visit in 2016. I would not recommend, sorry for the honesty x

[TheHughesCrew]

We were booked to visit Naples, and then AMI, in 2020. Thankfully, one of the reasons we weren't stung when we had to cancel, was that we had booked all our accommodation on a 'free cancellation' basis with Expedia. We typically paid a small extra price for this, but I was always conscious of red tide, and we would have changed our itinerary accordingly if it had been a problem; maybe staying longer in the keys, or visiting Miami and the east coast instead. We certainly wouldn't have visited if the red tide was bad...

[Moorlandman]

DO NOT GO! We went to AMI island in July 2018 and it was terrible. I could barely breathe and I do not suffer from asthma. Water was awful so no swimming. Just avoid

[shoei]

Hi there,
My family are down in sarasota so I have been visiting all my life.
Red Tide is in the water every year but it depends on the severity.
I didn't go summer 2018 so I can't comment on the red tide that year however I have been in other years where it has been bad although maybe not to the level of 2018.

Generally, it has peaks and troughs dependent on the algae bloom. I have been on the beach and in the sea when red tide is present and I have seen dead fish on the beach. This will be a few (I'm not wading through). It wasn't particularly smelly but the red tide does sometimes catch in your throat and make you have a little cough ( like you have dust in your throat) just whilst on the beach but I believe it can impact people with breathing difficulties and asthma more.

I follow Motes updates and you can see which areas are impacted and how it progresses. Trip Advisor forums are also good at seeing the actual impact on the beaches.

Clearwater have a very clean beach with a focus on maintaining it so they will be cleaning up regularly throughout the day.

If you have accommodation that you can cancel at a later date, I wouldn't be doing it just yet in my personal opinion.