Red Tide Alert
 

We have just returned from a week's vacation in Longboat Key, Florida near Sarasota (8/6-8/16). Upon booking our accommodations, no one warned us about the "red tide". Immediately upon our arrival at the beach, we began coughing and sneezing and the odor was unbearable and we noticed that no one was swimming in the Gulf. We decided to leave the beach and walk to the pool. While walking, we noticed many dead fish (large and small) along the coastline of the water. Upon inquiring to the "locals" we were informed that it was the "red tide" that was causing us to feel as if we were having some sort of sinus attack. It seems that there is some sort of "toxic algae" in the Gulf Waters that is causing the sealife to die and thereupon "toxic spores" permeate the air and that is what is causing the problems to humans. The hotels and the tourism industry seem to be keeping very "low key" regarding this problem. But people should be made aware because it is a very serious health hazard especially to those who already suffer from respiratory problems and also to young children. It is very sad for the environment. Other than this problem, Sarasota is beautful and the people very friendly.

Mother Nature can be harsh huh?

The Red Tide is nature's way of culling the weak and sick and thinning out the enviroment.

Sorry to hear that it was in bloom during your stay, but because it is unpredictible you never know when/where it will bloom again....if you do a search on red tide here, you'll see that this issue has been discussed numerous times in that area....including a link to a web site that tracks the bloom.

"Upon booking our accommodations, no one warned us about the "red tide"."

I'm so fed up with uninformed IDIOTS who are just now discovering red tide -- someone's supposed to tell you about it? Well why don't you 1) read the hundreds of newspaper articles or 2) read the eons of posts on fodors. You are posting here and are a semi-regular but if you had researched your trip you would have read any number of posts AD NAESUM on red tide. Jeez! Do an itty bitty search so you can get a grip.

Sorry but I have no pity for you. Especially because you post on fodors. You have been amply warned. Warned. Warned. On this board. Many, many posts.

TandooriGirl, I think you are being harsh and rude to Giuseppa. It is easy to miss posts on here, and you do not know how often this person posts. To imply that someone is an idiot is out of line. They may not have been on Fodor's recently for one reason or another!

Calm down, Tandoori Girl. Being a resident of Florida's gulf coast, like you, I am bombarded with information about red tide. However I am constantly, but only mildly surprised when I hear from someone who has never heard of red tide. If one doesn't know the problem, why would one be likely to look it up -- or for that matter, how would they know to do so? If browsing through Fodor's, why would they be any more likely to look at a post titled "red tide" than they would one that said "purple forest"?

I wonder if someone from Oregon or Wyoming or anywhere else would be equally appalled at you for not having heard about the latest wildlife problem in their state and if they would quickly call you an idiot if you mentioned it when you finally heard about it?

To travel without researching what and where you're going might be someone else's idea of planning, but it isn't mine. If I were going to Montana or Wyoming I would be prepared. And I wouldn't be blaming others that "no one warned us about" wildfires, black bears, the weather, or whatever. I don't think it's the responsibility of the reservations agent to tell me the status of the local environment when I make my reservations.

Well slap my mouth and call me stupid because I read and post here regularly, including numerous posts about the gulf as I go to Destin, and Pensacola beach, and this is the first I have heard of the Red Tide.
I highly respect your knowledge Tandoori Girl, and even have directed a post to just to you, but this was very rude and uncalled for.
I wonder how much you know about my area, or the west coast? Or England?
I felt slapped when you addressed that poster too.

Spyro, you're telling me you're in Destin and this is the first you've heard of red tide? That is sad. I wonder what it was then that made you open this post -- a football fan maybe? Or just another one of those many Florida red tide fodors posts that you've been reading. And reading. And reading.

I also must add that I go half blind researching areas before I go anywhere. I get booklets, write the area visitors information, get travel books, go to trip advisor and read every forum I can find.
I repeat...I have never heard of Red Tide.
Until today.

Here's an article from today's Tampa Tribune:

http://tampatrib.com/MGB41NS2ECE.html

What made me open this post? THIS which I just read TODAY.
<Is the Gulf water similiar to the Caribbean?>
.
Sarcasm doesn't become you.

I guess I'll take this opportunity to warn anyone who might be planning a trip to the Monterey Bay. We've been having red tide on and off all summer. while it's not as toxic as the east coast red tide it does cause sinus and throat problems if you swim in it. It's also nasty looking.
Local marine biologists are trying to figure out why we've had so many this year. It's normal for them to occur every now and then, but this year has been horrible.
Our local waters have been warmer than usual which could be a cause. Trying to figure out why the water is warmer w/ out an El Nino is another problem. One thing is for sure though, red tide is not a good thing for the tourist industry.

Viamar, we are supposed to go to the shrimp festival in Gulf Shores in Oct. How can they have all that seafood for sale if this is still a problem? How long does red tide usually last?
I'm concerned as we love the area, but certainly don't want to go at red tide.

I don't think the Gulf Shores shrimp festival is located in the Monterey Bay area, so you should be fine.
Around here red tides usually last a few days and don't return for a few months, this year hasn't been usual though.

Spyro--first, currently red tide extends only as far north as Hernando and Pasco counties, just north of the Tampa Bay area. It does not affect the entire Gulf, and even in these areas, you may have it on one location and not another two miles away.

Secondly, it is perfectly safe to eat fish, shrimp, crabs, caught during a red tide outbreak (providing of course they are caught live which is always the case :) ) as the toxin is not absorbed by their edible flesh. Harvesting clams and oysters is banned in areas affected by red tide because they can accumulate enough toxin as to be harmful to humans.

There is scads of information on red tide. Google google google. I read something here yesterday about someone describing reddish water at Mexico Beach and seaweed washing up (NOT an indication of red tide). A self appointed marine biologist on that thread attributed it to red tide! Geez louise! Here on these boards, far more than with even the normal press, please please please don't believe everything you read! I also read on that thread that you planned on canceling your October Panhandle visit because of it. Even if it were there, and it isn't, it would be foolish to alter plans now. I wouldn't even think about it for the Tampa Bay area where it is currently a problem. It could be gone in a week...probably won't be, but could.

We've just moved away from there but were back the beginning of July, spending a week on our boat. The most we ever experienced even in the area of bloom was some very mild sneezing...like an allergy irritation. The water was not red, and I've only seen it sort of reddish once or twice during a bloom. The first time I ever encountered it, Lido Beach about 8 years ago, the water looked lovely and normal. I couldn't imagine why I suddenly developed a tickly cough on the beach.

Don't change your plans for October and again, pullleassse do not believe everything you read here!!

00

Thanks for all the information, and I also have been googling. I won't be canceling my plans after finding out more.
I appreciate the time you took to help out the uninformed. I hope as time goes on and I vacation more down there,(I just love it) and read more I won't be quite as ignorant to these things.

Yesterday I took a walk at Sand Key park in Clearwater. This is a county run park with lifeguards, snack stand, etc, all the amenities. They clean up this beach every day. The unaware would never have known that Red Tide was there. But it was. The water was a brownish/green color, there were zero fish jumping, and I could hear people coughing and sneezing. I wanted to see if RT was just in my own backyard (Treasure Island) or if it was still in the Clearwater area.

The bottom line: it seems to be all over the place. When the dead fish are raked up daily (as in front of hotels and public parks) you hardly notice it. But on my residential beach, you can't help but notice all the lovely creatures that lay dying or dead. It is breaking my heart! I have not had a "beach day" in over four months (other than one weekend where we just ignored it because we had company). My lifestyle has changed!

But you know what, TGirl, not everybody knows about it. Ignorance is bliss! I see little kids picking up the dead fish and filling their sand pails, happy as clams! I think that is why Guiseppa's hotel did not warn him. Many people don't realize it - especially if the dead fish are removed. And I still have not seen any FIRSTHAND accounts of "severe health" problems - hay fever type symptom only, which decrease immediately upon going indoors or leaving. "Young children" are no more susceptible than anybody else. OO is right, don't believe everything you read!

Then call me one of the idiots because I've never heard of red tide until I opened this post. I've been travelling to Florida all my life since my family is down there, but never go to the Gulf. They've never mentioned it to me. I read the newspaper every day and have never noticed any of the hundreds of articles on it. I've been away from Fodors for a few years until recently, and this is the first post I noticed on it - the title intrigued me. Sorry for my exquisite idiocy.

I'm still trying to figure out why a person from "up north" would be called an idiot for not knowing about red tide. I just looked through a list of the past 100 topics that come up when you hit Florida here. I'm sure that red tide may be mentioned in a couple of them, but oddly enough none that I found. People may research here for hours on Florida and get tons of information on transportation, flights, hotels, resorts, restaurants, activities -- and NEVER once come across a mention of red tide. Most people coming to Florida for a week don't just happen to go to the Tampa Tribune site to check on things, much less enter the word "red tide" when they've never heard of such a thing.

I haven't looked at a Florida guidebook in a while, but last I knew there is no mention anywhere in any of them about red tide.

My entire family comes from Ohio and they all visit down here often, but when I mentioned red tide at a family gathering this spring, NOT ONE had a clue what I was talking about. Why would they? Do you think the Dayton Daily News posts front page reports of it? When was the last time you saw CBS or NBC with a special evening report on Red Tide?

So let's be a little open minded here and give people the benefit of the doubt rather than call them idiots because they don't happen to have the superior knowledge that you have.

I may be an idiot too, although I would not appreciate being called that. I've lived my whole live within an anywhere from 30 to 2hr to the beach and never heard of red tide until this year, reading of the trouble in FL this year!

I do read papers and knew that jellyfish/seaweed were a usually a problem in July/August every year. Never realized people had respiratory problems from it until recently!

I work in the health care field, had asthma as a child, still have many allergies and have done alot of reading about the subject(s).

Have I really had my 'head in the sand' all these years or is this fairly recent terminology?

Anywhoo... I've lived enough years to know that nobody knows EVERYTHING, and sometimes we ignore or miss the obvious!
Anyone who calls people idiot may need to take a look at their own life and attitude towards others...& try to be alittle understanding.

The thing I like about Fodor's is that MOST people here are tolerant of other's opionions and try to inform/share with a caring attitude.

Isn't that what is forum is for?

I'm still searching these threads everyday to learn new things...Belle

OK, I apologize. "Idiot" was a strong word.

When I searched fodors for "red tide" there were ONLY 50 posts and that doesn't even include any recent ones, including this one, posted after 7/20 (as we all know, fodors search is often days in arrears). I would venture to suggest here that I could easily find your own posts, Patrick, suggesting that people need to search before posting. But I need to get back to my real job and will gladly admit that you are all much nicer and more tolerant than me -- unless of course when someone has the gall to post in all capitals (something I am not the least bit offended by, Patrick, but for some reason this drives you mad).

The real reason we post is to communicate and I apologize, Giuseppa, if I in any way hindered your desire to communicate. It was not my intention, I'm just a bit frustrated with all these oh-my-gosh-there's-red-tide posts.

Tandoori Girl, you really are missing the most basic point. How in the world or why in the world would somebody enter the words "Red Tide" in a search function if they have never even heard that expression?

The real point is that one searches for Florida accomodations, Tampa restaurants, or "how to get from Tampa to Sarasota" -- the things a person is LIKELY to search for -- there is a very minimal possibility they will find any mention of red tide.

Sort of like someone being bitten by the rare "three headed gitzou snake" in Borneo, and someone saying why didn't you enter "three headed gitzou snake of Borneo" before you went and then you would have known all about it. Huh?? Get the point?

In reply to Tandorri Girl: Please be advised that I was aware of Red Tide prior to our trip to Sarasota since a few months prior we had vacationed in Naples where the problem also existed, but not as badly as in Sarasota so I guess in the excitement of my trip, it just slipped my mind. Therefore, I think it would have been appropriate, if at the time of booking, the hotel would have brought the matter to my immediate attention by saying" please be aware that at the present time "red tide is in full bloom in our area and if you are travelling with anyone that has respiratory ailments or if you are travelling with very young children you may want to re-consider your travel dates and book at another time of the year. Let me also say that I live on the East Coast of Florida and I do try to stay informed as to what is occurring in my state, but at no time have I seen any articles regarding "red tide" in my local papers or heard any reports on the local news/weather program. Also, I have never heard Gov. Jeb Bush address the problem.....Perhaps the tourism industry in the State of Florida is trying to keep this problem as quiet as possible, because, let's be real, no one wants to swim with dead fish..........

TGirl:

Patrick is absolutely right! Why would I search for something I've never heard of.

You are out of line.

Guiseppa...You just dropped about 20 notches in my sympathy meter. Not only do you know about it, you experienced it to some degree in Naples a few months ago. More importantly, you LIVE in the state, and frankly, unless you are blind, deaf and dumb, there is no way of not knowing what has been happening on our coast this summer! It most certainly does make the news in state. Not only does our bloom make news, even the bloom in New England does and the differences between the two! Heck..we even know when you all are having sea lice problems or when the baby sharks are nipping at peoples heals around JAX and Sebastian. Why would Jeb address the problem anyway? He's far too busy with mandated classroom sizes and bullet trains to bother with an annual summer phenomena which has been studied and studied and no solution or known cause yet found.

Toxic spores aren't permeating the air because of dead sea life either....you need to google too!

Sorry, but Tandoori Girl may have the last laugh after all. Could she have expressed it differently, yes--not that blind deaf and dumb is much better, LOL, but frankly, when I read where you are from, it changed everything said previously.

Giuseppa, the "problem" with red tide is that it can be here one day, gone the next, with no reason or warning. So what is a problem today can be non-existent tomorrow. It can leave that suddenly. Should the hotel warn you of this when it is highly unlikely that it would affect you? This outbreak of red tide has been unseasonably long, by many months. It is usually only around for a few days. This has been a very strange event. Which we have had some lengthy discussion about on fodors, very similar to this one.

We know so very little about red tide though it has been studied extensively. When I googled "red tide panhandle", I came up with information that there had been a huge outbreak of red tide in the FL panhandle in 1999. But they've not had an outbreak since. And red tide is a constant problem in the north pacific area as well, affecting the Maine fishing industry.

mikesmom, Patrick is not being truthful when he says that searching for posts on Florida won't find any mentions of red tide. If you search red tide on Florida, many Florida posts come up. If you search Florida on fodors, many red tide posts come up. You should try it. It's the Search engine at the top of the fodors page. This is what I'm suggesting here, that we not be so reactionary but instead use the search engine.

Another thing, Giuseppa, my husband and I went to the beach a couple of weeks ago and red tide was in bloom. It did not bother me one bit but my husband was complaining that his throat was itching and that the smell was bothering him. He was coughing a bit, I was not affected at all. We couldn't figure it out, why it wouldn't bother me but did him.

"mikesmom, Patrick is not being truthful when he says that searching for posts on Florida won't find any mentions of red tide. If you search red tide on Florida, many Florida posts come up."

OK, TG, what part of "Why would I search for something I've never heard of," do you not understand?

Have we at last found a truly proper use of the term "idiot"?

Let me see if I can express this is more simple terms you can understand.

If a person has never heard of the red tide, how would he know to enter those words in a search function to find out about it? Huh?

Patrick, HUH yourself. You are being anal. Do you honestly think I don't understand you? I simply don't agree with you. So you can put it to rest and quite trying to explain it to me.

And why do you think it's wrong for me to refer to someone as an idiot when you TREAT people like idiots most of the time then camaflauge it with sacrin anal dribblings, meandering that you're misunderstood. You're quite understood, I'm just trying to politely ignore you.

She had heard of it Patrick, and she'd experienced it too. Look at her post above and mine following (I did a preview then answered the phone before posting so it's out of order as to when it was actually written).

Still, when it ocmes right down to it, when TG answered she didn't know the woman was a Floridian, nor did she know she'd already experienced it, so yes, she could have taken another approach. In view of everything else, I'm beginning to side with her, however.

I agree with her assessment too as to why it's not mentioned. It could be here today and gone tomorrow. So far it hasn't been but this is the odd case of bloom.

I know I have my days, we ALL do, when I'll read something here and think, "Oh please, give me a break" or worse. Usually I manage not to hit the "post my reply" button before I've reconsidered. Not always though..:D

Well, I'm not sure what difference it makes that in this case the original poster did come back to say she HAS heard of red tide, or that she is from Florida, since the real discussion is about how anyone who isn't an "idiot" should have researched and somehow clicked onto the topic "red tide" to find out about it even if they HAD never heard about it. That was the original understanding by TG and by all of us.

Regarding the hotel not mentioning it -- well, of course not. Do you expect a hotel to tell you that it might be a week of heavy rain, or remind you that it will be hurricane season and you might have a miserable time, or tell you that last year there was a major heat wave that week and people were miserable? When booking a ski resort do you expect them to remind you of the odds that there may be no snow that week? I wouldn't expect any hotel to tell me about the "possibilities" of some hit or miss problem. Why should they?

this is hysterical!!

Blithering idiot! Look what you've done, you've got all the Floridians squabbling, a first! ROFLMAO

I know Patrick I know...I just find it hysterical that as it turned out, her initial assessment was correct, despite the fact that she couldn't have realized it at the time.

Peace...not one person here, including Blithering, will back down, so it's best put to rest, JMHO.

Perhaps it would be a nice thing for there to be some type of daily warning, i.e. as a sign on the beach, for red tide. Just as there are signs for daily weather/ wind conditions, swimming conditions, ski conditions, blowing snow and the like for beach and ski areas.

MzPossum, if you would SEARCH "red tide" on fodors and read some of the way-too-many posts about this subject, you would easily see that there is a web site that gives weekly updates based on daily collections by scientists of water samples.

I'm too busy grumbling and groveling right now to find it for you.

1. Chambers of Commerce would probably be unhappy with broadly publicized red tide warnings, esp. since it can disappear as quickly as it arrives and it's only a life-threatening problem (i.e., raising question of stupid lawsuits) for a very small number of people. Asthmatics tend to figure out there's a problem pretty quickly, and leave. It's absurd to expect a hotel to call you to say, "we've got red tide, maybe you want to cancel." You don't even get your money back for a hurricane (unless you buy hurricane insurance).

2. Other than people who are obviously bothered by it -- asthmatics, people with respiratory diseases, etc. -- it's at the moment not very predictable who will react to it and who won't be bothered at all -- some don't even notice it. I cough, with watery eyes and I notice a sharp odor; my husband says he feels and smells nothing. It's a mystery.

3. The Mote Marine website is a good monitor for this and has shown up on a number of the threads about it: http://www.mote.org/index.php?src=ge...0Tide%20Update

4. I suspect Giuseppa was mostly really p.o.'d at their very lousy luck and timing, and maybe at herself for not thinking to check before they left. But the point of her O.P. is that there really is no acknowledgment of the problem by govt and business, and maybe that's irresponsible. Maybe it is, but maybe there's nothing much they can do about it.

I don't see much point of a sign on the beach saying there is red tide present. When I get within a block or two of the beach, I KNOW if it is present. I wouldn't get close enough to the sign to read it.

By the way, here in Naples, all the locals gather on the beach every day at 5, face the Gulf and turn slightly northward. Then we all blow as hard as we can. So far it seems to be working. We haven't had any red tide in what -- maybe a year now?

I had never heard of Red Tide until it was mentioned on this forum a few months back.
I am ALWAYS reading travel info - travel guides, newspapers,web sites, brochurs, etccc... and before a few months ago - never heard of it... so to call someone an idiot is pathetic to me.... It is a little different than wild fires, bears and the like in Montana...
I realize the offrending poster sort of apologized but sheeeeesh

We were in Sarasota in June, during an outbreak. If not for the dead fish, we would have never known. The water looked and smelled the same, and no one in my family experienced symptoms.

As for the dead fish, it's not like there was one every two feet. More like every 50 yards or so - not tons, but more than I've ever seen there before.