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..

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.