CAPE CORAL, Fla. — There's no doubt about it — red tide is here and it's causing fish kills in our water.
Steve Larry has spent his winters in the Burnt Store Marina neighborhood for 15 years.
He emailed Fox 4 these photos of fish being scooped out of areas where he's never seen kills before.
"We take daily walks, and we notice samplings of these fish floating in the north, north harbor entrance and thought, well, that was strange,” said Larry.
He says hundreds of fish have already been scooped out of the water but some are still there. So, Fox 4’s Bella Line went to check it out.
Watch Bella's full report below:
"It seemed to increase last, I think it was last Thursday that they that we walked around the harbor and the inlet was basically almost white with fish,” said Larry.
Line reached out to the Sanibel Captiva Conservation Foundation and they told Line the red tide event off of Sanibel is showing very high levels of Karenia brevis. They are even seeing the patches of red tide make their way into the Charlotte Harbor and Pine Island Sound, causing massive fish kills.
"2018 was this was a big red tide, and it was pretty catastrophic, and this one has been that size. It doesn't mean it's going to have the same ecosystem effects that the 2018 one did,” said Richard Bartleson, a researcher with SCCF.
Bartleson says 10,000 cells per liter of this algae can cause fish kills, but they are seeing more than one million cells per liter.
"There's no safe, no species that really safe from it a fish from the high levels,” said Bartleson.
Bartleson says the good news is that it's not growing, but he also says, you shouldn't eat any seafood out of this water, that filters the water like oysters or clams.
