Expert: Local waters 'ripe' for algae blooms
Mickey Ferry knows the issues: there are too many people sending too much freshwater to the oceans.
Green algae? He's seen it. Brown water? Try black.
"We all admit that there's problems there and it started a very long time ago," said Ferry, general manager of the Boat House Tiki Bar and Grill in Cape Coral. "Ultimately it's going to trickle down to people canceling their rentals and there are less rentals and that does affect all of the entertainment and tourism businesses, any aspect of them. From restaurants to boat rentals and grocery stores, the impact is tremendous and it comes down to the fact that no one has done anything."
Ferry says he's seen algae blooms come and go over the past 20 years or so while working at various Fort Myers Beach restaurants. And every time the algae-tainted waters flow, Southwest Florida businesses feel it.
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Monday the algae was knocking on his door again, mostly piling up on the east side of the pier at the Cape Coral Yacht Club. Algae has been reported in the Caloosahatchee River for more than a month, and a large bloom in the Stuart area on the east coast has crippled coastal operations there. Some water experts fear water conditions will deteriorate further in Lee County waters.
After getting consumer questions following negative publicity about algae, Lee County Visitor & Convention Bureau last week put links to beach water-monitoring programs and to live beachcams on its fortmyers-sanibel.com website. The bureau also has been posting same-day or nearly same-day videos of beaches on social media.
"It's come up again and when they stop the releases and the rainy season ends and the blue water pushes back in, it will go away," Ferry said. "But the essential problem is they've affected how the Everglades filters the water flow. And (we) just keep compounding it by (releasing) more water from the lake (Lake Okeechobee) and (adding) more population and more fertilizing and golf courses and lawns."
Clumps of cyanobacteria, often called blue-green algae, have been documented in recent weeks, and water quality samples show there is too much freshwater in the Caloosahatchee's estuary.
Sea grasses are dying. So are oysters and other shellfish.
Lake water gushing down Caloosahatchee River
"We have a lot of animals that aren’t tolerant of freshwater, so we have big ecosystem effects and we don’t have time to even quantify how bad it is from getting all of the freshwater," said Rick Bartleson, a water quality scientist at the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation.
Bartleson collects water samples regularly and turns his findings over to the state and local governments.
Freshwater, Barlteson said, is pushing into the Gulf of Mexico, where a saltwater bacteria is absorbing the excess nutrients flowing down the river.
Upriver, at the Franklin Lock and Dam, algae was piling up at a control structure used to release water from the lake and lands west of Okeechobee.
"It seems kind of algae-ee," said Teresa Schimmel, a Cape Coral resident who was camping at the lock with family and friends. "I've been here when the (swimming) beach was full. I believe (it's empty) because of the algae. I went kayaking and it was all over the kayak."
Algal blooms are not new to Southwest Florida. Some forms of algae (like Karenia brevis, which causes red tide) have been documented here for more than 100 years.
The problems start when excess nutrients and freshwater enter the equation. The Everglades and South Florida evolved as a low-nutrient system.
Nutrients used in household fertilizers and from farm fields can cause one organism to explode in numbers, which is what is often referred to as a bloom.
Stephen Davis, who holds a doctorate in wetland sciences and works for the Everglades Foundation, toured the east coast last week and visited Fort Myers on Monday.
"It's likely we could see something," Davis said. "Maybe not to the extend of the east coast, but the conditions are ripe for a bloom here."
The Everglades Foundation and other environmental groups want the state to buy sugar lands south of the lake and turn those lands into a water reservoir.
Storing the water south of the lake, instead of blasting it out the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie rivers, would reduce the amount of harmful freshwater now flowing to the coast.
Some legislators, however, and farm businesses, say that buying sugar lands and increasing water flows to the south of Lake Okeechobee aren't the answer.
Local clean water advocate John Heim, of Fort Myers Beach, flew to Washington, D.C. on Monday to speak with a panel headed by Rep. Curt Clawson, R-Bonita Springs.
"The powers that be are still taking the age-old complacency approach and sweeping it under the rug as if it isn't an ecological disaster, even though we are under a state of emergency," Heim wrote to The News-Press.
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