While a swath of red tide stretching for more than 200 miles has formed from Tampa Bay to Key West.

It has moved ashore along much of southwest Florida, leading to several red tide health alerts.

The concentration of the organism that causes red tide, cranio brevis, is weak in some places.

In others, the red tide bloom is so strong it has turned the blue green water burnt orange for dozens and dozens of miles.

The bloom started near Tampa after Hurricane Milton in October.

Now its epicenter is Lee and Shirley counties and Sanibel and Captiva Islands near the mouth of the Caloosahatchee River.

Joining me now to explain what is going on is Doctor Michael Parsons, a professor and the director of the Vester Field Station at the water school here at Fgcu.

Doctor Parsons, thank you so much for joining us.

We appreciate that.

Thank you for having me.

So let's start with this.

I think, you know, when you talk about a size of a bloom that large, it's concerning.

Is there anything, you know unique to this?

How concerned should we be?

Is it unique?

We should always be concerned when the blooms get this big.

It's happened in the past.

Most recently in 2021, but farther north off of Tampa and more extending up to Clearwater.

But of course, the real bad year was in 2018 and 2019.

So when it is that big, it can cause a lot of fish kills.

It gets in the news a lot.

And that can affect tourism and our economy.

So it is concerning when it's a big bloom.

So do we have a sense.

Can we predict how long these blooms are going to last or how severe they're going to get Historic.

Historically, when you look at these blooms, they usually start at the end of September or the beginning of October, and they usually finish at the end of January, early February.

So that's what we use as our yardstick to see how long it's going to be and when it's going to occur.

So it is unusual when it lasts longer than that.

Again, back in 2018 and 2019 when it actually extended through the summer, we don't really have a good way of predicting how long it will last, however.

So sometimes scientists have said that they're confident that this bloom is related to recent release of nutrient filled water from Lake Okeechobee.

Can you explain the thinking there?

So that is a difficult question because, number one, red tide is a natural phenomenon.

It starts fairly far off shore, 50 to 100 miles off shore.

And it gets its nutrients through natural processes through the ocean, killing fish, through other organisms in the ocean.

And so the bloom is pretty well formed before it gets close enough to shore, where we can have an influence.

So we do not start the bloom.

And it's not an easy question.

Do we influence the bloom?

Can we say that runoff and nutrients causes the bloom to get worse?

If it was that easy, we would have answered that decades ago.

So it is a hard question.

There have been some recent studies that suggest there is a relationship that actually the blooms are prolonged by these discharges.

But it's not as simple as x causes Y, so there's more to it than that.

What would you say is the biggest misconception about Red tide?

I think the biggest misconception of Red tide is that we cause it.

We do not cause it, but we may influence it.

And are we doing enough to control it?

I know I was thinking about a story.

Did gosh spend more than a year on Charlotte County's efforts to get rid of these septic tanks?

Because so many of them are leaking?

Are we doing enough to kind of help Mother Nature?

We're doing what we can.

I think at least, in terms of technology development and strategically thinking of reactions for this.

The problem is, when these blooms get so big, they're just too big to try to combat or try to reduce.

So we have to be really strategic in our approach.

So some of the strategies that are being tried out right now include.

And canals and bays near areas where there's large concentrations of people, public beaches and things like that.

So we're looking at more surgical ways of trying to control and mitigate red tide.

But we do not have the capacity or the technology to to handle the bloom when it's so big like it is now.

Doctor Parsons, thank you for your time.

We appreciate it.

Sure.

You're welcome.

And then I think.