Twenty-two days after Hurricane Ian made landfall, the first signs of a red tide bloom emerged on Florida’s Gulf Coast.
It was Oct. 20, just offshore of the Sarasota coast, when researchers documented medium levels of the organism that causes toxic blooms.
If you had scooped up one liter of ocean water there that day, you’d find more than 100,000 tiny karenia brevis cells. That’s enough to kill wildlife and impair human breathing. Enough to be considered a “bloom.”
