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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

January 5, 1998 Monday All

SECTION: Health and Science Pg. 4

LENGTH: 1050 words

HEADLINE: Red tide may be a killer we must learn to live with

Detection, warning may be most we can hope for in fighting algae blooms

BYLINE: JAMES PINKERTON

SOURCE: Houston Chronicle

DATELINE: South Padre Island, Texas

BODY:

As a potent red tide outbreak lingers into its third month along the lower Texas coast, marine scientists warned that the deadly algae is a centuries-old visitor that will likely return again and again.

Spanish conquistadors found discolored water and dead fish in the Gulf of Mexico as early as 1530, experts note, and a massive 1935 fish kill near Corpus Christi was mistakenly blamed on an undersea volcanic eruption.

Leading marine researchers say harmful algae blooms like the ones that cause red tide are on the increase in waters around the world, but nobody is certain why. These toxic marine phytoplankton are known to cause five different varieties of seafood poisoning that are harmful, sometimes fatal, to humans.

"They are happening in more places in the world than they did 20 years ago, and the question is: Why?" said Karen Steidinger, a senior research scientist for Florida's Department of Environmental Protection.

This year's red tide outbreak in Texas began at the Port O'Connor jetties Sept. 18. It spread down the coast and into Mexican waters, seeming to run its course by late October after killing about 14.3 million fish and sending many fall beachcombers packing.

It is unlikely this year's outbreak in Texas will survive much longer, as colder weather sets in, since red tides thrive in warm water and need sunshine and nutrients to support their prodigious blooms.

Meanwhile, the life cycle of this tenacious microscopic plant has become the focus of an unprecedented five-year government research effort.

Some marine experts hope the new research could lead to development of a biological control that would consume the red tide organism, possibly a virus or a bacteria that would be specific to only that species. Another aim of the research is to establish an early warning system that could detect emerging blooms before they move into coastal waters.

Next year, researchers, including Steidinger in Florida, will take part in a five-year, $15 million project called Ecohab, the first coordinated federal effort to study harmful algae blooms, including the red tide.

The urgency of additional research was highlighted this summer, when a bizarre aquatic organism called Pfiesteria piscicida struck tributaries of the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. The toxic organism killed fish and afflicted a dozen people with a strange malady that caused dizziness, memory loss and greatly diminished mental capacity.

In the past 20 years, red tides have been implicated in the deaths of bottlenose dolphins in Hawaii, hundreds of manatees in Florida, pilot whales in the Northeast and pelicans on the West Coast, along with massive fish kills in the Gulf of Mexico, marine expert Daniel G. Baden told a congressional hearing last month.

Nationally known experts including Steidinger say much more needs to be learned about the tiny organism.

"When the Spanish explorers landed around Tampa, in talking to the Indians they said they could tell the seasons by when certain flowers bloomed and when there were fish kills," Steidinger said, adding that the first documented red tide outbreak in Florida occurred in 1844.

The red tide blooms are caused by the explosive growth of a microorganism one-thousandth of an inch in diameter that propels itself slowly (3 feet per hour) with two whiplike appendages. Scientists say it lives in the Gulf of Mexico year-round in the relatively shallow waters of the continental shelf.

"The organism is there all the time in low numbers in the Gulf of Mexico; the question is what causes it to form these population explosions," said Ed Buskey, a University of Texas associate professor of marine science. "When there are only a few cells out there, it doesn't kill fish, but something causes it to bloom and take over the water column, and that's when we have problems."

Buskey, with the University of Texas Marine Science Institute in Port Aransas, believes the potent toxins ejected by the organism are "a defense mechanism gone haywire."

"The thing that doesn't make sense is why does a plant like that target fish, since fish don't eat them? You should make a toxin that targets your predators, the things eating you, the other zooplankton."

And while Texas has weathered major red tide blooms in 1935, 1986 and 1997 Florida has more.

Steidinger, the Florida expert, notes that red tide blooms have hit her state in 22 of the last 23 years, including an outbreak last year that killed 149 endangered manatees. A red tide on the west coast of Florida in 1987 swept out of the Gulf of Mexico and rode the currents up the coast to North Carolina.

As part of the Ecohab research, Florida will begin in May 1998 to install a series of offshore monitoring buoys that, combined with regular surveys by vessels, could help scientists learn when a red tide bloom is forming offshore.

If red tides can ever be controlled, Steidinger believes it can be done only by locating and treating the "seed beds" of the microscopic algae as they rest on the continental shelf.

"There are red tides typically occurring across hundreds and thousands of square miles, and it's not like an oil spill, just on the surface; it's down to 150 feet," Steidinger said. "So when you talk about controls, you can be talking about a large volume of water."

At the Naval Research Laboratory in Mississippi, oceanographer Sonia Gallegos has been using weather satellites to track red tide worldwide.

The large blooms in the Gulf of Mexico, Gallegos theorizes, are triggered by the powerful loop current that flows from the Caribbean Sea, up the west coast of Florida and back again and into the Florida straits. As the current brushes along the continental shelf, red tide organisms are carried off and deposited into the coastal waters of Florida and Texas.

And when conditions inshore are right warm water, abundant nutrients, high salinity and calm seas the red tide cells begin to multiply quickly, and a vast bloom tints the sea red.

"These massive red tides are part of nature. It's always there, and you learn to live with it," Gallegos said. "There is nothing we can do about it, but what we need is an early warning system.

"And satellites are very good at pinpointing them."

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