Red tides, which are massive algal blooms, can block sunlight from reaching the sea floor and release toxins into the water and air.
Seagrass growing in the waters off Florida's Gulf Coast has been dying off at a rapid rate over the past few years as a result of toxic red tides and other environmental stresses, and that's having a damaging effect on marine wildlife.
Stock image of seagrass in the Mediterranean. Seagrass across the coast of Florida has been dying over the past few years as a result of red tide algal blooms.."In 2020-22, we lost 5 percent of our seagrass meadows. The two years before that, we lost 18 percent." Seagrasses are plants that grow on the seafloor, usually in the shallows, as their growth is limited by the amount of light that they can receive.
These meadows of seagrass, which cover around 2.7 million acres along Florida's coastline, are hugely important to the marine ecosystem, sheltering and feeding marine life like the manatee and hundreds of other species, preventing coastal erosion and storing carbon. It is thought that the seagrass declines on the Florida Gulf Coast may be related to pollution released from an industrial site on Piney Point. Some 215 million gallons of contaminated water were released from the site, authorized on March 30, 2021 by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.
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