Envenenaron al Golfo de Mexico y se murio.
coreya
los pendejos como si no supieran y fuera un misterio.
_____
http://www.naplesnews.com/02/03/naples/d599686a.htm
Commercial fishermen demand answers to 'black water' mystery
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.
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."
Copyright ) 2002 Naples Daily News.