Commercial fishermen demand answers to 'black water' mystery
CJ
Commercial fishermen demand answers to 'black water' mystery
http://www.naplesnews.com/02/03/naples/d599686a.htm
Sunday, March 17, 2002
By CATHY ZOLLO, crz...@naplesnews.com
Commercial fishermen along the Southwest Florida coast are reporting a
massive dead zone that is almost devoid of marine life in an area of
the Gulf of Mexico traditionally known as a rich fishing ground.
They've dubbed it black water, and they're demanding that local, state
and national government agencies find out what's causing it.
Scientists who have heard of the phenomenon say they, too, need
answers.
"It's killed a lot of the bottom because recently a lot of little
bottom plants are coming to the surface dead and rotten out in the
Gulf," said Tim Daniels, 58, a Marathon Key fish-spotting pilot who
has been flying over the Gulf for more than 20 years.
Like Daniels, fishermen with decades on the water say they've often
seen red tide but they've never seen anything like this - it doesn't
have a foul smell, it isn't red tide and it isn't oil. They describe
it as viscous and slimy water with what looks like spider webs in it.
First sighted in January, the mass of black-colored water reached from
20 miles north of Marathon Key halfway to Naples. It stretched west
almost 20 miles into the Gulf of Mexico. Fishermen don't know if it's
moved in from the north or offshore or if it originated in the coastal
waters off Southwest Florida.
Though somewhat smaller now than descriptions from January, the mass
of water that is still quite large is moving into the Florida Keys
National Marine Sanctuary.
Created by Congress in 1990, the 2,800-square-mile Sanctuary adjacent
to the Keys is the largest coral reef in the United States. It
includes the productive waters of Florida Bay, the Gulf of Mexico and
the Atlantic Ocean.
Part of the ecosystem is an extensive nursery, feeding and breeding
ground that supports a variety of marine species and a
multimillion-dollar fishing industry that brings in almost 20 million
pounds of seafood each year.
Billy Causey, superintendent of the Sanctuary, told the Naples Daily
News recently that there is real concern in the scientific community
about the overall health of the Gulf.
Causey said contributing to the problems afflicting the shallow body
is global warming, extended periods when the Gulf waters aren't
cooling in the winter, and the growing impact of human activity along
coastlines.
"What we're seeing is part of a bigger picture," Causey said. "We're
seeing accelerated problems around periods of elevated temperatures."
Those problems, beginning in the early 1980s, include more frequent
and longer lasting coral bleaching events that by 1990 were affecting
stouter coral reefs closer to shore and more adapted to wide
temperature swings.
"There are places that are still beautiful but the shallow reefs would
make you cry," said Causey, a Keys diver since the 1950s.
Scientists with Mote Marine Laboratory based in Sarasota said they are
aware of the black water phenomenon but hadn't yet been able to test
water samples.
Erich Bartels, staff biologist at the Lab's Center for Tropical
Research in the Keys, said he'd only seen samples too old for testing
that were brought in by crabbers.
"If you held it up to the light, it had a blackish tint to it," he
said. "...If you have black water, there is something going on. It's
some kind of dead zone. We just don't know. We're trying to get
samples."
Mote is willing to send out testing kits to fishermen who might
encounter the black water zone, but Bartels said in the absence of a
kit, fishermen could put a sample in a clean bottle and keep it in a
cool, dark place until they could get it to a lab.
Karen Steidinger, senior biology research scientist for the Florida
Marine Research Institute in St. Petersburg, said she hadn't yet heard
about the phenomenon. She said there's a summer release of brown water
from the Shark River about 35 miles south of Marco Island, but she
doubted the black water was that. The description relayed to her from
fishermen didn't allow her to speculate on a cause.
Steidinger said samples of the water that had been properly handled
would provide the best answer.
Black water surfaces
Daniels said he first noticed the black water when he went out in
mid-January, ahead of kingfish season, to see what fishermen had in
store for 2002.
When he was flying over water that was 50 feet deep and north of the
Keys, Daniels began to notice a change in the water color.
"I thought, 'What in the world is going on here?"' Daniels said. "I
went out to the northwest and it was solid black. And I went to the
west to get off of it - out to 70 or 80 feet of water north of the
Marquesas (Islands) - and it was still there. I came back in and
turned north of Key West and it went north. (More than) halfway to
Naples from Key West, it was black across the whole place."
Although there are almost no fish in the zone, Daniels said, the few
that fishermen found there - and other fish that entered the water -
reacted strangely.
"You'd see them here and there, but they were jumping and running, not
stopping - and acting different," Daniels said. "Like they didn't want
to be there."
Other pilots and fishermen report the same.
Mike Richardson, based out of Everglades City, has been fish-spotting
for 25 of his 50 years and said next to the normally green water, the
black water stands out like night versus day.
He's quit flying over it.
"There's no sense going into it," he said. "You can't see anything."
He hasn't seen dead fish in the water, though there have been numerous
large fish kills in recent months off Southwest Florida. Most,
according to the Florida Marine Research Institute, have been
attributed to red tide - a naturally occurring microscopic organism in
the water.
Fishermen like Howie Grimm, 42, who has been in the business out of
Everglades City since he was 15, insist the black water isn't red
tide.
"It's something totally different from anything I've seen," Grimm
said. "We have to figure out what it is. There's no fish in it. It's
like dead water."
Richardson, too, has seen plenty of red tide, whose origins are still
not fully understood by scientists.
"This is not like anything I've ever seen," he said.
When pilots from the air see boats move through a red tide zone, they
often cut the reddish or brownish water to reveal green below.
That doesn't occur in the black water.
"This (dark) stuff goes all the way to the bottom," Richardson said.
Boats that have 4 to 5 feet of hull below the surface cut through 35
to 40 feet of water and leave nothing but the same black water in
their wakes. It's the same at depths of 15 feet, he said.
"It didn't matter where they ran through it, nothing left a trail,"
Richardson said.
Grimm has reported the phenomenon to officials from the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, but said he hasn't heard back
yet.
That it's affected the fishery, commercial fishermen have no doubt.
"I've net-fished for mackerel all my life," Daniels said. "This is the
first year that we haven't caught one Spanish mackerel in the Marathon
area. They're not there."
The southeast corner of Florida Bay, an area flushed by Atlantic
waters, is the only place fishermen are catching mackerel, and they're
doing it with hooks and lines, he said.
Symptoms of a sick Gulf?
Along with the newly discovered black water and coral bleaching, there
have been other problems with the Gulf that have been documented for
years.
They include a New Jersey-sized dead zone coming off the Mississippi
River outlet to the Gulf that consumes a larger area each summer.
There are incidences of a contamination known as fibro papiloma in
green turtles that live in Florida Bay.
And now fishermen from Fort Myers Beach to the Keys wonder if there
might be new problems to worry about.
They said there have been bigger fish kills that aren't making it onto
government reports. The largest, many say, occurred late last year
about 30 miles off Tampa Bay. It had shrimpers pulling up netloads of
dead and decaying fish off the bottom, they said.
Some shrimpers based on Fort Myers Beach worry that a recent and
unexplained slew of flesh-destroying infections they've seen among
their number may be related to problems in the Gulf.
Charles Bruns, left, and Willie Sherwood, both
commercial fisherman out of Fort Myers Beach, have been
affected by a flesh-eating bacteria. The bacteria has
been affecting many fisherman whose home port is Fort
Myers Beach. ( PHOTO) Romain Blanquart/Staff
The infection is diagnosed as cellulitis in three of their medical
reports. They say it begins with a blister on the skin but swells to a
large nodule before it erupts and then spreads. It can only be treated
with stout antibiotics.
It was mentioned by fisherman David Wellsley on CenterPoint, a 7 a.m.
Sunday radio talk show hosted by Gary Burris and Ralf Brooks on
WNOG-AM 1200 and 1270. Dan Basta, director of the National Marine
Sanctuary program, will be the guest today, along with pilot Daniels,
discussing the black water phenomenon as well as other problems with
the Gulf.
Two of the Fort Myers Beach fishermen who suffered the infections are
Kevin Flanaghan, who nearly lost his foot, and Willie Sherwood. They
work for different fleets; both run out of Fort Myers Beach.
Both of them and others say there is fear among laborers in their line
of work about the infection that seems to follow cuts doused with
waters from the Gulf.
Many report taking precautions such as bleaching their gear and
washing up with heavy-duty anti-bacterial soap after pulling in their
nets.
The fishermen contend it's a new phenomenon. But some boat owners and
local health officials speculated that the fishermen's compromising
way of life - the drinking, long-term exposure to the sun's
ultraviolet rays and weeks at sea when they are never dry - is the
culprit for their infections.
The men won't lie about their lifestyles. They admit living from
paycheck to paycheck, partying and drinking - then cleaning up for the
most part when they're at sea.
They call it coming off the hill. They'll work for 20 days or more
catching fish - and then spend the money they earn in a few days
ashore.
But they also say folks in their line of work have been doing that for
decades without the fear of this sort of infection.
Ray Hoggard, 49, is among the many who say the infection is a hot
topic.
"It's common talk on the ship-to-ship radios," he said.
A few times in recent weeks, boats have had to bring in for treatment
some men who were stricken.
"It's a hell of a coincidence or something's up," Hoggard said.
Grant Erickson, 48, owner of Fort Myers' Erickson and Jensen Seafood,
has a fleet of eight boats. He said he, too, hadn't seen the likes of
these infections in the business that his family has been in for a
half-century.
"It seems like there's something on the bottom ... these boats (nets)
drag the bottom," he said. "I don't think it's the lifestyle of the
fishermen that's changed. If anything it's better than years past.
There's nothing new except the infections."
Dr. Mark Brown, an infectious disease specialist in Naples, said
without seeing and testing the infections there is no way to identify
the organism or organisms that caused them.
He said the next logical step would be for someone to do an
epidemiological study of the fishermen to compare them to a control
group to find out what's causing the infections.
Unless doctors are culturing the bug to see what it is, they may never
find out, Brown said.
"They need to find out if they all have the same bug," Brown said.
"They're going to have to try harder to make a microbiological
diagnosis of what germ is causing this. . . They may not even be
looking."
Health officials from Lee County, where the affected fisherman are
based, said they investigate any of more than 70 communicable diseases
and any odd health-related occurrence.
"We need to gather a lot of information," said Dr. Judith Hartner,
director of the Lee County Health Department. "The first step is
somebody needs to report it."
Three doctors who've seen the affected men said they didn't culture
the organism that caused the infection.
Brown said the symptoms of the infection - the swelling, fast pace and
flesh-destroying nature as reported by the fishermen - sounds like
Vibrio vulnificus, a common seagoing organism. However, he didn't
speculate on why or if it might be on the rise among fishermen.
According to a Johns Hopkins University Web site, the bug frequents
areas where the water temperature remains high throughout the year and
are most abundant in summer. The infection progresses at a rapid pace
and can be fatal.
Hartner said her agency needs to answer a number of questions before
deciding if the infections warrant investigation.
"Do the fishermen think it's unusual?" she asked. "If we do an
investigation and we find out the cause, is there anything we can do
to prevent it? We don't know that it's on the rise. It could be
coincidence."
2002 Naples Daily News.
Never anonymous Bud
>Of course it's done by Saddam, the bogeyman ;)
Off topic AND probably a copyright violation.
To reply by email, remove the XYZ.
Lumber Cartel (tinlc) #2063. Spam this account at your own risk.
It's your SIG, say what you want to say....
CJ
"Never anonymous Bud" <the...@san.rxyzr.com> wrote in message
news:c36nlu07l9meh994a...@4ax.com...
> During a break from squirrel wrestling, "CJ" <unk...@nowhere.org>
belted out...
>
> >Of course it's done by Saddam, the bogeyman ;)
>
> Off topic AND probably a copyright violation.
So ?
Craig Miller
> Of course it's done by Saddam, the bogeyman ;)
Has too be - the environment is not being affected now, is it? ;)
Emo.
Bnzmn600
>massive dead zone that is almost devoid of marine life in an area of
>the Gulf of Mexico traditionally known as a rich fishing ground.
>
My guess, some toxic that's being dumped there in the middle of the night.
no
....................
CJ wrote in message ...
Bnzmn600
Yeah we're going down, and this is just the beginning, in a year from now we
wish we would have another chance to be back at Aug 15th 2002.
Dale Smith
>
>
> Commercial fishermen demand answers to 'black water' mystery
> http://www.naplesnews.com/02/03/naples/d599686a.htm
>
> Sunday, March 17, 2002
>
http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/04/02/black.water/
Scientists stir 'black water' mystery
Marine biologists: No easy answers, little apparent danger
April 2, 2002 Posted: 10:27 AM EST (1527 GMT)
This true-color image of the affected water off southwestern Florida was
taken on March 21 by NASA's SeaWiFS instrument aboard the SeaStar
spacecraft.
MIAMI, Florida (CNN) -- Researchers are comparing notes on a giant,
mysterious area of "black water" in Florida Bay that they say seems to be an
algae bloom -- a natural and common event, if one of the biggest in many
years.
At this point, scientists say they can see no reason for panic. They say
that although the algae may chase away fish, it doesn't appear to kill
them -- and it doesn't appear dangerous to humans.
Fishermen and environmentalists say this could be a major wake-up call:
They've reported die-offs of sponges and other sea-bottom life in areas
touched by the dark-water bloom.
Near Key West, the dark water still can be seen but it's a greenish-brown,
not black.
And although marine biologists in Florida are accustomed to seeing the "red
tide" bloom, they concede they're stymied in this case.
CNN NewsPass VIDEO
U.S. marine scientists are trying to determine what is causing the
mysterious 'black water' found off the coast of the Florida. CNN's Mark
Potter reports (April 2)
"This is truly a detective story," says John Hunt of the Florida Marine
Research Institute. "We had events occur. We're trying to collect
information today and project back to see what has caused this event."
At its peak in February, the darkened water covered an estimated 700 square
miles north of the Florida Keys and west of the tip of the mainland.
And scientists are warning as their tests go on that they may never fully
solve the mystery of the bloom they're seeing.
CNN's Mark Potter has more on this curious phenomenon.
PriorityRed
>
>
> Commercial fishermen demand answers to 'black water' mystery
> http://www.naplesnews.com/02/03/naples/d599686a.htm
>
> Sunday, March 17, 2002
>
> By CATHY ZOLLO, crz...@naplesnews.com
>
> Commercial fishermen along the Southwest Florida coast are reporting a
> massive dead zone that is almost devoid of marine life in an area of
> the Gulf of Mexico traditionally known as a rich fishing ground.
>
> They've dubbed it black water, and they're demanding that local, state
> and national government agencies find out what's causing it.
Sounds like a Doobie Brothers song... ;)
PriorityRed
It's probably from Texas or one of those companies owned by the Bushes.