I am told that the gulf coast sees red tide pretty much every year. Here in SE Florida, some years I see it & other years I don't. This year it was heavier than normal.
When you see the stuff floating on the surface, it's really bad. When you see dead fish, it's really bad. Until you get a good stiff west wind for a few days, it just hangs around & gets worse. For a while here, the lifeguards at the beach were wearing gas masks. That was a new one for me. I had to go out about 6 miles before I started finding fish that would bite. The nearshore bottom bite was dead as far out as I tried, which was about 300' in depth. That is a really bad sign. That is the last place that I look when nothing is biting anywhere else & it "always" gives me something.
The effects that you feel at the beach are amplified by surf. Surf breaks up the red tide & releases it's toxins into the air. I had an uncomfortable lunch at Benny's on the Beach in Lake Worth a couple of weeks ago.
I am sure that even if the population here were reduced to 10% of what it is, & farming was similarly reduced, we would still have some toxic algae blooms, but I am fairly confident that they would be much smaller, fewer & further between. I remember seeing the differences that were made when phosphates were removed from detergents. Man made chemicals do feed this kind of stuff significantly.
Politics here are not as bad as some other places I have lived, but there is a lot of room for improvement. When I voted today, there were several line items that listed only one name to choose from. I entered 3 write ins & left 1 blank. The politicians here are mostly in the pockets of large contributors, as much as they are in many other places. There are a lot of people in this state with incredible amounts of money & influence. Their needs/wants/desires get a lot of priority.
