NEWS PRESS
February 01, 2007

ALGAE SPOIL SANIBEL BEACHES
Biggest concentration on Algiers Beach

By Kevin Lollar

http://www.news-press.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070201/NEWS01/702010364/1075

Ruth Higgins was appalled earlier this week by the dense carpet of drift algae at Sanibel's Algiers Beach.
Thirty feet wide in places and 2 to 3 feet deep, the algae stretched for miles, clumped and matted like red dreadlocks.

"I've been coming here since before there was a causeway, and I've never seen anything like this," said Higgins, 86, of Buffalo, N.Y. "I don't like it at all. It's very disappointing. This is not the Sanibel I knew as Sanibel."

Brian Lapointe, of Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution in Fort Pierce , was more excited about the algae. "I'm fortunate that I came over to Sanibel today. This is by far the worst I've ever seen on Sanibel," said Lapointe, an algae expert. Sifting through the mass, Lapointe rattled off the names of 15 different species of algae.

While green algal species were in the mix, the most by far were red drift algae.

County scientists started seeing thick coats of red drift algae on artificial reefs late last spring. Turbulence caused by strong weekend winds probably tore the algae on the beach from the reefs.

Red drift algae should not be confused with red tide: Red drift algae are macroalgae that can be seen with the unaided eye.
Red tide is caused by a microalga and is visible only through a microscope.
It produces a powerful toxin that can kill marine life and cause respiratory problems in people.

Nutrients' role

While scientists don't know what causes red tide, they do know that nutrients, mainly nitrogen and phosphorus, flowing into coastal waters can cause massive blooms such as red drift algae. Such blooms have been getting worse in Lee County during the past three years.

Sources of nutrients include treated sewage and fertilizer from agricultural lands.

"After the hurricanes of 2004, a big slug of nitrogen flowed into coastal waters," Lapointe said. "You have a fast-growing area with a lot of sewage. Also, the Caloosahatchee is draining ag lands, and you have water from Lake Okeechobee , which gets nitrogen-rich water from the Kissimmee Valley . So with the sewage and the ag runoff, you get a double whammy."

Tarpon Bay

Lapointe had come to Sanibel this week to look at Tarpon Bay after he heard that it was suffering from a drift algal bloom.

Ralph Woodring, 70, who was born on Sanibel, said it's bad.
"Nobody's catching any fish at all," Woodring said. "We had a little bait: Some glass minnows came in and stayed a couple of days and then left. We had a run of mullet a few weeks ago, but they left. There ain't any birds because there's nothing for them to eat.

"We have a lot of shrimp and crabs, because there's nothing to eat them. Everything else is in damn short supply."
Woodring said the bay is crawling with an unusually large number of sea hares — shell-less mollusks that eat drift algae.

Water in the bay should be murky, Woodring said, but it's been surface-to-bottom clear for months, which is a problem: Drift algae need sunlight, and they get plenty of it in clear water.

Ding Darling

While red drift algae clog Tarpon Bay, which is part of the J.N. "Ding" Darling National Wildlife Refuge, a nasty green alga is fouling much of the refuge's other waterways.

The stuff showed up more than a year ago and never left.

"During the growing season, it grows incredibly fast," refuge manager Rob Jess said. "It has established itself, so it takes less nutrients. We've seen our seagrass beds decline by half in the past two years. The fishing is down. The mullet aren't here. The wilderness area has been tremendously devastated."

Jess said the algae is a mess.
"We're in a long-term decline," he said. "If this continues, we're going to have a sterile environment out here."