CAPE CORAL, Fla. — Blue-green algae continues to ravage canals in North Fort Myers and Cape Coral, with new health alerts issued on Friday from Florida Department of Health. Those alerts are along Canal Circle and Whitecap Circle in North Fort Myers and Coral Point Drive in Cape Coral.
Fox 4 Meteorologist Andrew Shipley visited Coral Point Drive on Friday and spoke with residents who were not only upset about the blue-green algae, but also a bubble curtain at the mouth of the canal not working for months.
The City of Cape Coral told Fox 4 this is one of three bubble curtains not working at the moment. Two of the curtains were damaged by Hurricane Ian, but the one on Coral Point Drive was possibly struck by a boat. The good news is the City should receive a replacement part next week and the curtain should be repaired by divers in two weeks. But even with the fixed bubble curtain, that likely won’t solve the ongoing bloom.
“So, if there is algae that is coming from a different source and already in the canals and being fed there, they are not going to deter that,” said Melissa Mickey, Cape Coral Communications Manager. “It is only if it is coming from the river into those canals.”
So what about existing blooms?
“We are actively monitoring and working now towards mitigating this problem,” said Mickey. “And that's probably going to include giving some algicide, working with different vendors to do algicide applications in the not so distant future, most likely later this month.”
The City is also asking neighbors to be responsible as well, by following the fertilizer ban in place, in addition to not mulching your grass and picking up dog waste and other things that can add more nutrients to our waterways. Adding those nutrients will only make the ongoing situation worse and feed new algae growth.
As for the bubble curtains, the City says they are getting a lot of questions about boating. They say you don’t need to do anything special — like idling over them or turning off your engine — when going over the curtains. They are simply just a wall of bubble to deter the algae during a rising tide
