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Worst of Red Tide seems over in Pinellas

 
Published Oct. 27, 2016

It has been a busy time for Treasure Island city workers, who in the past few weeks have cleaned up 40,000 pounds of dead fish on the city's beachfront.

But public works director Mike Helfrich thinks — and hopes — the worst is over.

"We are in pretty good shape now, just an isolated dead fish or so," he said.

Since Sept. 27, eight city workers have hand-scooped and raked fish killed by Red Tide and hauled the smelly catch to the county's landfill to be burned in an incinerator.

Helfrich estimates 190 staff hours were dedicated to the effort at a cost of about $5,000.

"They (fish) were washing ashore in droves," he said. "We had lots of complaints."

The harmful algae bloom, which impacted Pinellas County from Clearwater south as well as Manatee, Sarasota, Charlotte and Lee counties, has now spread farther south to Collier County as a result of Hurricane Hermine, according to Kelly Richmond, spokeswoman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

Experts, she said, predicted the storm would push the bloom farther south and farther out to sea, which appears to be what has happened and why Pinellas beaches are now almost free of dead fish.

Recently, there's been no evidence of the bloom along Clearwater or Redington beaches and a medium concentration level near the Skyway Fishing Pier and, for the first time, minimal evidence in Tampa Bay.

"The beach is open for business and it looks pretty good out there now," said Mike Clarke, public works director for St. Pete Beach.

A large number of dead fish meant extra effort for the workers doing St. Pete Beach's daily beachfront raking from Sept. 27 until recently, he said.

Clarke, who drove a beach buggy up and down the beach and suffered from a scratchy throat for a couple of days as a result, saw the Red Tide's impact up close.

"There was a continuous stream of fish at the high-water mark or along the shore, and they were almost all under eight inches, mainly cowfish and pinfish, which birds feed on," he said.

Since the town uses a beach rake to clean its beach every day, extra costs from the fish kill were minimal, Clarke said.

Richmond says more testing is needed before determining the future course of Red Tide.

"It is still here, but we can say it's lower in samples we have collected," she said about testing results from Pinellas County.

Clarke says he's found it hard to forecast the Red Tide's movement, but city crews will take it all in stride.

"It comes and goes like some kind of ghost," he said. "One day it's there and the next it goes somewhere else."