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Texas Red Tide Bloom - 2000 - Summary
Texas Parks and Wildlife

Red tide of 2000 wrap-up meeting

Scientists, state officials, and other experts from across the state convened Thursday, January 4, to critique the state response to the red tide bloom of 2000. The purpose of the meeting was to evaluate the state response and identify future courses of action. In addition participants received an update on the progress of several research projects being conducted on red tide under contract with Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPW).

RESEARCH UPDATES

TPWD is currently administering an NMFS grant on red tide research and related activities. Several of those working under contract with TPWD were present at the meeting to discuss progress on their projects.

Tracy Villareal with the University of Texas Marine Science Institute led off with a discussion of work he has done monitoring algal communities and water quality in samples collected for him by TPWD Coastal Fisheries staff. Dr. Villareal's presentation is available as a Power Point file, which Cindy Contreras has available for anyone who is interested. He has made some interesting observations about water quality patterns along the Texas coast, looking at nutrients and chlorophyll a. During the 2000 bloom, he found a Gymnodinium species, a "look-alike" to our Texas red tide species Gymnodinium breve. It is unknown how this other species compares in toxicity to G. breve, although it was collected along with G. breve in an area where a fish kill was taking place. Tracy also noted that there was poor correlation of cell counts with water color as seen on MODIS satellite imagery. Therefore we should not assume that discolored water seen in satellite imagery is red tide. Tracy advocated collecting more field data to ground-truth satellite imagery. Tracy is working on a separate contract to identify whether Texas has a separate strain of G. breve with different temperature and/or salinity requirements from the Florida strain, which is well-studied. Early information seems to indicate that Texas G. breve is similar in salinity requirements to the Florida strain.

Sonia Gallegos with the Naval Research Laboratory at the Stennis Space Center presented the progress of her work with Melba Crawford of the University of Texas' Center for Space Research. Drs. Crawford and Gallegos are looking at remote sensing data as a tool to track origins of blooms and eventually develop a way to forecast blooms. They compared satellite data from 1998, a year in which we had no discernable red tide bloom affecting the Texas coast, with data from the 2000 bloom. They found that the Gulf Loop Current stayed east of the 87th meridian in 1998, but swerved west beyond the 89th meridian in 2000. Evidently warm-core rings migrating off the Loop Current came very near to shore in 2000. They found evidence that Sabine River water entered such a ring in the vicinity off Sabine Pass where red tide was first sighted and killed fish in 2000.

Garen Evans, a doctoral student at Texas A&M University, is working with Lonnie Jones of TAMU on an economic impact study of red tide. Dr. Jones was ill and Garen was gracious enough to make the presentation in his absence. Lonnie and Garen have completed a literature review pertaining to the economic impacts of red tides. Based on the paucity of data available to produce a statistical model, they have decided to take a case study approach. The case study will focus on the economic impact of red tide to beach clean-ups, oyster closures, and recreational tourism. They plan to prepare a questionnaire to be used in soliciting economic information from businesses. Garen stated that they hoped to focus on Nueces and San Patricio Counties during the months of September through December 2000. Comments were made that it would not be helpful to look at that area if oyster closures were the concern, since there is relatively little oystering in or near Corpus Christi Bay. An alternative focus on the Galveston Bay and Sabine areas was recommended, since the red tide was intense there for quite some time and did affect oystering economically. This discussion was tabled until next week or a convenient time once Dr. Jones is available and some of the TPWD staff can get together with him and Garen and provide input.

Finally Jay Pinckney with Texas A&M University spoke about his work developing an HPLC method for quantifying the abundance of red tide (G. breve) cells in water samples using a unique biomarker photopigment, gyroxanthin. Dr. Pinckney's presentation is available on the Internet at http://www-ocean.tamu.edu/~pinckney/texhab.htm. He has found that the HPLC method has some application for monitoring the density of blooms, even at very low cell concentrations (< 5 cells/ml). He was able to take advantage of the 2000 bloom due to another field project he was already working on in Galveston Bay. After doing some comparisons with published data from Florida red tide samples, he found evidence that G. breve in Galveston Bay may have a higher concentration of gyroxanthin per cell than the Florida blooms.

Following the presentation there was general discussion to evaluate the state response to the 2000 bloom. Praise was given for these efforts and activities:

Some things that participants felt needed to be done to improve the state response included: