Wanting to get closer to the red tide destruction, my wife and I visited Whitney Beach this morning. Stretching along the northwest edge of Longboat Key, it is both the most scenic stretch of sand and (in my opinion) the best birding location on this barrier island. As expected, the beach was littered with dead fish, eels, rays and horseshoe crabs and the variety of birds was far below normal.
Wandering among the dead, we endured the nauseating stench of rotting sea life. While a couple of yellow-crowned night herons and a dozen shorebirds (black-bellied plovers and ruddy turnstones) scoured the beach, they stayed clear of the victims; brown pelicans and large flocks of laughing gulls passed overhead or lounged far offshore. Except for a lone hunter with his metal detector, we were the only humans on that popular beach.
Though the algal counts have waxed and waned along Florida's Southwest Coast, the red tide is expected to persist until a tropical storm or cool autumn weather invades the region. There is trouble in paradise and, this morning, we bore witness to its wrath.
Wandering among the dead, we endured the nauseating stench of rotting sea life. While a couple of yellow-crowned night herons and a dozen shorebirds (black-bellied plovers and ruddy turnstones) scoured the beach, they stayed clear of the victims; brown pelicans and large flocks of laughing gulls passed overhead or lounged far offshore. Except for a lone hunter with his metal detector, we were the only humans on that popular beach.
Though the algal counts have waxed and waned along Florida's Southwest Coast, the red tide is expected to persist until a tropical storm or cool autumn weather invades the region. There is trouble in paradise and, this morning, we bore witness to its wrath.
