Here’s what Tampa Bay should know as red tide drifts offshore

As Southwest Florida grapples with fish kills and possible respiratory issues, the bay area is mostly clear for now.

Stretches of the debris-strewn beaches of Southwest Florida, still recovering from Hurricane Milton, are now littered with thousands of dead fish.

The likely culprit of the reported fish kills in Charlotte County, water scientists say, could be red tide, a harmful algal bloom with toxins that can cause human breathing problems and kill marine life.

As the Tampa Bay area remains in the throes of storm cleanup, how concerned should we be about a bad bloom flaring up? The Tampa Bay Times asked scientists, oceanographers and state biologists, who agreed that conditions here look clear.

Last week, state water experts detected the organism that causes red tide, Karenia brevis, in 49 samples across Southwest Florida. Five of those samples showed red tide blooming offshore of Pinellas County, two showed blooms off Manatee and another two showed a blossoming red tide farther south off Sarasota County.

Closer to shore, though, the beaches looked free of red tide. As of Tuesday, the closest detection of Karenia brevis to Pinellas beaches was about 3 miles southwest of Madeira Beach. A recent analysis by Chuanmin Hu, a professor of optical oceanography at the University of South Florida, showed a bloom that popped up near Tampa Bay after Hurricane Helene moved to the south of Sarasota.

Looking at the latest wind and ocean current patterns, Hu said he thinks Tampa Bay is in the clear for now. And he isn’t the only one.

“I don’t think it rises to the level that the community needs to be worried about at this time,” said Maya Burke, assistant director of the Tampa Bay Estuary Program. The salt levels in the bay would make it hard for a bloom to grow, she explained in an email.