At Least 600 Tons Of Dead Fish Have Washed Up Along Tampa Bay's Shore

https://www.npr.org/2021/07/13/ [login to see] /a-summer-red-tide-has-left-hundreds-of-tons-of-dead-fish-along-tampa-bays-shore
For beachgoers in the Tampa Bay area, the last few weeks have been anything but normal. Discolored, soupy waters have been lapping the shore, and the beaches are laden with dead, rotting sea life.

Maya Burke, a lifetime resident of Pinellas County, knows the sights — and smells — at this time of year are anything but normal.

"The bay is really hurting right now," she said. "It's significant numbers of dead fish all up and down the food chain, from small forage fish all the way up to tarpon, manatees, dolphins. ... If it's swimming in the bay, right now it's washing up dead."

The hordes of fish were killed by a red tide, a large "bloom" of toxic algae that appears on Florida's Gulf Coast about once a year. Exposure to blooms can cause respiratory irritation in humans. To fish and other sea animals, they can be deadly. But Burke, who serves as the assistant director of the Tampa Bay Estuary Program, and ocean scientists agree: A bloom of this intensity shouldn't be happening in Tampa Bay right now.