now this is very scary. here is a quote from this article.

"All the coral, all the sponges, all the crabs, not a single living thing, all the star fish, the brittle stars, everything's dead," said Miller.

Can't say what the cause might be, but I guess that enough time for the experts to investigate will pin something down.

The descriptions reminded me of some of the more extensive fossil sites around the world, widespread total ecosystem shutdown ... some have suggested massive methane or CO2 emissions ... none have considered algal blooms before... hmmm <_<

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yea i guess we will just wait and see .... strange stuff happening round the world.... up here in canada west coast -- there are no sockeye salmon this year... scientist think its because of ocean warming which is up 3 degrees in some places....weird...

This is very weird. I hope to see what they come up with as the cause.

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Wierd, can someone please explain to me what the red tide is because I have no clue what they are talking about.

Red Tide is a name given to a sudden explosive growth of algae. It makes the water look red.

Red Tide has a good write up.

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All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct.~ Carl Sagan ~

Humanity must rise above the Earth, to the top of the atmosphere and beyond, for only then will we fully understand the world in which we live.~Socrates, 500 B.C. ~

Let every man judge according to his own standards, by what he has himself read, not by what others tell him. ~Albert Einstein~

Oh ok thx.

Would it have anything to do with the fact temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico this year were unusually elevated, as evidenced by the way the hurricanes that traversed the Gulf picked up an enormous amount of energy and power from the Gulf?

Maybe not even directly, but maybe the increased water temperature impacts on other organisms within the eco-system that somehow comes round to effect the turtles???

Just speculating.

WOW! I used to volunteer at the Clearwater Marine Aquarium several times a week when I was in High School, and my sister did the same. It is cool to see an article posted about them. Unfortunately the aquarium seems to be dieing. Its really a shame, it is a great place. I am not sure where all the injured turtles and marine animals would go if they weren't there to take care of them.

There are actually 2 different things going on in the Gulf of Mexico. One is a yearly "dead zone" that has appeared a ways off-shore each year for the last few years. Nothing lives in that area. Nobody knows exactly why it occurs.

The other problem was an absolutely massive red tide that existed of the central west coast of Florida for many weeks this summer. It killed off much of the fish and shellfish in the Tampa Bay area, made a lot of people and turtles sick, and I hear it will take decades for the ecosystem to recover.

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Wow, that is bad, I hope it isn't something that can spread vary far out from it's original location, other wise it could do some devastating damage to the ecosystem.

Poor turtles...

Red tide is caused by normal ocean algea called dinoflagellates. For some unknown reason there is a bloom where normally harmless number of the organisms grow to massive numbers. They give off toxins in very large amounts that kill or sicken most animals exposed to them. So it is not like some sort of disease that can spread, it is already there. It just needs a trigger, but we do not yet know what that trigger is.

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My Website: The Black Cat's Web Page

The Red Algea - is it the same stuff that has a tendency to grow onto skin and eat away at it? I saw something on that on a hippie propaganda piece talking about the horrors of massive corporate-owned farms, and how the increased amount of waste from the high amounts of cows and pigs caused some sort of algea to grow a lot nearby. Though it might not have been algea, but some other sea/ocean/lake-oriented biological thingy (Man, I'm so technical-sounding).

They would grow on the fish, and risk harming those that ate them. Also, they could even grow on people as they got into the air itself, and eat away their flesh.

(On the piece itself: A lot of it had some points about how dangerous corporate-owned farms are, but after it was published, or maybe during, a lot of changes and revampments to law took place, so the majority of things that it complained about were changed.)

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That was the Pfisteria hysteria ifif fi recall correctly..ffff
Price fister faucets.

Not a chance.

The primary cause may be one or more Red Tide(s). The scary truth is that it is caused in entirety by chemical runoff (nitrites & nitrates), and is complicated by vast amounts of semi- or completely untreated industrial and human waste that is flushed wholesale into the Gulf. Animal populations not killed off by the oxygen deprivation caused by the red tides are also killed off by massive amounts of pollutants from Mexico, the United States, and Central American nations. These pollutants are so non-stop, the wound never has a chance to heal.

It's a mystery to me why we act so surprised that there's a whole bunch of death in an area of the Ocean where we dump a big bunch of poison. These "dead zones" are popping up near many areas of large human population and industrial centers on coasts. If you don't believe me, just do a search for "dead zones" and "ocean".

You're somewhat correct- that's a different, localized algal bloom still going on. The Pfiesteria species are estuarine dinoflagellates, some of which produce harmful toxins. It broke news about 3-5 years ago, largely in the Mid-Atlantic region (Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland), where large numbers of fish, shellfish, and aquatic mammals were turning up very ill or dead, with massive lesions. The toxins produced were thought to be harmful to humans swimming in, or eating fish caught in estuaries, tributaries, and coastal waters. Some research was done, and I believe that the abnormally high levels of Pfiesteria were attributed to run-off and contamination from large pig farms in Virginia and North Carolina. Freaky stuff.

Oxygen deprivation is not the primary problem with red tides. Dinoflagellates produce toxins, that is what causes the fish kills, not a lack of oxygen. You are confusing fresh-water algae blooms with red tide, they both kill fish but the reasons are completely different. If it was oxygen starvation then it would not kill and sicken humans, marine reptiles, and marine mammals, but it does.

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I met this wonderful girl at Macy's. She was buying clothes and I was putting Slinkies on the escalator.
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My Website: The Black Cat's Web Page

The oceans are full of toxic waste dumped by the US army in the 50s and 60s. 500 tons of radioactive waste, canisters of nerve gas, barrels of various chemical weapons (either confiscated from the Nazi at the end of WW2 or produced domestically), and so on. Canada and the UK dumped large amounts of hazardous material as well.

Although hundreds of offshore dump sites were identified, only 26 have been formally acknowledges by the Pentagon.

In the meantime... in the 70s and 80s, fishermen discovered that cod often presented skin burns and blisters. The biologists dismissed this "disease" as bacterial infestations. But then, the cod stocks plumeted. Could the drop be caused by leakage from chemical waste constainers lying on the ocean floor? Cod is a bottom dweller fish.

Each year, a few fishermen are injured by canisters that get stuck in their trawling nets.

You can find hundreds of articles on the subjets.
For instance:
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/40/209.html

So maybe the Gulf of Mexico mystery is just that.

The cod stocks plumeted because of overfishing, as has pretty much every commerically caught fish. That is nothing special. The government funded fishermen to give them the best boats and bets technology to compete with other countries, but they did too good a job and now pretty much every fish we catch commericaly is suffering from overfishing.

And this is caused by a known organism, red tide. Its numbers can be measured, it can be seen under a microscope, its toxins can be detected in the water and in fish, there is no mystery that red tide is the cause. Believe me, I have seen it with my own eyes.

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I met this wonderful girl at Macy's. She was buying clothes and I was putting Slinkies on the escalator.
-Steven Wright



My Website: The Black Cat's Web Page