NaplesNews.com

Red tide increase caused by people, scientist says

Sen. Mel Martinez among those attending watershed summit

By GREG MARTIN, Charlotte Sun-Herald Staff Writer

March 25, 2008

http://naplesnews.com/news/2008/mar/25/red-tide-increase-caused-people-scientist-says/

PUNTA GORDA — Are those fish-killing, lung-choking red tide algal blooms on the increase? If so, are people causing it?

The answer to both questions is “yes,” according to Dr. Larry Brand of the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of marine biology.

But he added that political forces have been pressuring him to stop espousing his theory.

Brand presented his case for the human factor in red tide blooms Tuesday as part of the three-day Charlotte Harbor Watershed Summit under way Thursday at Edison College’s Charlotte Campus in Punta Gorda.

Brand’s theory was disputed, however, by another scientist attending the summit — Kellie Dixon, senior scientist for Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota.

Organized by the Charlotte Harbor National Estuary Program every three years since 1997, the summit provides a chance for scientists to share their research on the harbor’s ecosystem. The session is to resume at 9 a.m. today with a talk about evaluating the health of tidal creeks.

The problem with Brand’s theory is that his data has a bias, Dixon said during a break in the presentations Tuesday. In the 1950s, data was only sporadically collected, typically only when a red tide outbreak was observed from a beach.

Today, data is collected from satellites and other high-tech devices. So, more red tide blooms are getting detected, Dixon said. That skews the data, she added.

“It’s really a messy question, and nobody wants a messy answer,” Dixon said.

Their argument caught U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla., in the middle, after he stopped to chat with the two scientists while waiting to make a keynote address.

Martinez asked Brand what’s new in red tide research.

“We do make it worse,” Brand told him of the human factor.

“Although, in fairness, Larry, you can chalk up the data in many ways,” interjected Dixon.

Along the Gulf Coast, the toxic red tide is a dinoflagellate known as Karenia brevis. It has been present for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.

But the size of blooms, their intensity, and duration have grown over the past 50 years, a fact that Brand correlates to Southwest Florida’s growing human population.

He cited data that shows Karenia brevis is about 20-fold more abundant within a mile or so of the shore than five or six miles offshore.

Also, the organism was 15-fold more abundant in a recent period, from 1994-02, than in the past, from 1954-63, he said.

“They say the data is biased, but when you see a 15-fold increase, I can’t explain that with a ‘bias in the data,’” Brand said.

Brand also displayed maps to support his contention that nutrient pollution discharged into rivers exacerbates the problem.

The maps were used to track a red tide bloom that first appeared south of the mouth of the Caloosahatchee River a few months after two hurricanes crossed the watershed in 2004.

Over the course of a year, that bloom drifted south of Naples, and then north off St. Petersburg, where it likely contributed to the formation of a “dead zone,” he said.

Brand said state officials have recently visited him at the University of Miami to ask him to refrain from espousing his theories. He refused.

“It’s political,” he said.

Preventing fertilizer pollution would be a good thing to do for the ecosystem, Dixon acknowledged. It would reduce other algae blooms and that would result in clearer water and healthier seagrass beds, she said.

But if reducing red tide is the goal, it would be foolish to begin spending millions of dollars limiting nutrient pollution until that is confirmed as the culprit, she argued.

Martinez, who is from Orange County, said he has vacationed in Southwest Florida and knows the impact of red tide on tourism.

“It’s disheartening,” he said. “It’s awful... It makes it difficult to breathe. It would be interesting to know if anything we’re doing is causing it.”

In his keynote address, Martinez said he has requested in a letter to House leaders that Congress continue funding the U.S.’s National Estuary Program with $27 million. The Charlotte Harbor NEP, which would get $600,000, uses the funds to leverage grants from other local government agencies to finance research.

“It’s been incredibly important for the estuaries of importance nationwide,” Martinez said.