Saving Seafood

Florida: Red tide creeps up to Melbourne Beach, Indialantic

October 17, 2018 — INDIALANTIC, Fla. — While test results to prove red tide are pending, the itchy throats and rancid fish carcasses on the beach this week have some already convinced, and fearing a repeat of the toxic tides that thoroughly flogged the Space Coast 16 years ago.

For tourists, another red tide now would be lousy timing. For fish, too.

“Right now we’ve got a big mullet run on the beach, so there are a lot of migratory fish following the mullet runs,” said Jon Shenker, associate professor of marine biology at the Florida Institute of Technology. “I have no idea how bad this is.”

Beachgoers and beachside residents have complained in recent days of coughing and irritated throats after being by the ocean. Dead fish reported in Indialantic and Melbourne Beach on Tuesday included bluefish, Spanish mackerel, mullet and other fish. A dead fish dotted the shoreline every 10 feet or so at Paradise Beach Park.

Brevard County is helping Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission gather water samples to test for the red tide organism, Karenia brevis. The algae releases a neurotoxin that can cause asthma-like symptoms. If ingested, it can cause digestive problems. Brevard County Natural Resources has coordinated with FWC for sampling beginning Tuesday and hopes to know the results on Wednesday.

“In the meantime, we have been monitoring conditions and have reached out to various agencies, such as Keep Brevard Beautiful, Tourism and Development, the city of Cocoa Beach, to plan for a coordinated response if and when we have reported fish kills,” Brevard County spokesman Don Walker said via email.

Read the full story at Florida Today

 

Scientists: Climate change could punish fish habitats targeted for conservation

May 8, 2018 — Aquatic preserves created to protect sea life from Australia to the ocean off Mayport stand to lose huge numbers of fish as oceans warm in coming decades, researchers reported Monday.

The report in the journal Nature Climate Change concludes many of more than 8,000 places labeled as marine protected areas will be overtaken by effects of climate change without major reductions in carbon-dioxide releases worldwide.

“There has been a lot of talk about establishing marine reserves to buy time while we figure out how to confront climate change,” said Rich Aronson, a researcher at the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne who co-authored the report with seven other scientists. “We’re out of time and the fact is we already know what to do: We have to control greenhouse gas emissions.”

Marine protected areas have grown mostly unnoticed over a generation, spreading to include big chunks of Florida’s coastline. The Oculina Bank, for example, a stretch of deep coral reefs near Vero Beach, was just a “habitat area of particular concern” when the South Atlantic Fisheries Management Council attached a label to it in 1984. Rules against anchoring and fishing for snapper and grouper were added in the 1990s, then in 2000 the size more than tripled and new restrictions were added.

Read the full story at the Florida Times-Union