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Originally Posted by Escape Artist
Since this is just my second winter/spring in TV, and Florida in general, I’m not too familiar with the seasonal changes that take place on a regular basis. Red tide is one of them, but I heard that this year it is affecting beach areas farther north than in the past and is lasting longer. Some reports claim it night last until May or longer.
My family was planning on visiting the last week in April and was thinking about renting a house near Sarasota/Siesta Key. However, I heard that they are being heavily affected by red tide this year and I don’t want them to go to all that expense and not be able to use the beaches and swim, etc.
I’m asking those who have lived here a long time and are familiar with red tide if this is indeed unusual situation and if you have heard when it will end. Thanks in advance for any responses.
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Every year I spend Thanksgiving week at an exclusive little resort in Mexico that has only about 200 yards of ocean front and no beach but a little breakwater and a sandy area a couple feet above the water. Last year was the only week I’ve been there out of about five when there haven’t been about ten guys with pitchforks and wheelbarrows spending all day forking up sargassum and carting it off-site to be used as fertilizer. Of course this is really expensive to do, and it won’t happen on a couple thousand miles of Florida beach. When it arrives, sargassum just looks like seaweed, and it doesn’t smell bad. That happens when it leaves the water and dies. Last Thanksgiving week there wasn’t nearly as much, and a couple guys a few hours a day was enough to take care of it. With a resort, it is either pick it up or shut down. I was on the beach at Siesta Keys last month. It’s huge, flat, and public. It was fine at the time, but keeping it clean will be difficult. I used to go to beaches in Southern California fifty years ago, and there was always kelp and other seaweed washing up. That’s different, as it didn’t float in from the Great Sargasso Sea, but broke off from off-shore kelp plants growing in the ocean.