Not the most glamorous of titles that I have ever used for a blog, I’m afraid. But sometimes words need to be succinct and to the point.
You see, Saturday morning was a very early start. A 90 minute drive to Lido Beach in Sarasota was on the cards. I was meeting with Kari and Brian and their friend Denise so that we could try to pull off a specific photograph at first sign of dawn.
Kari had raised the issue to me a week ago and given that I had already experienced it several times on Florida’s west coast, I didn’t need any convincing.
So I left home around 4:45 and with nobody on the road, I managed to shave ten minutes off the ride and pulled in to the little car park just off Lido Beach just after six.
I was quite a bit away from sunrise and about half an hour ahead of our meeting time, so I sat there for a moment thinking about what had brought me here, this time of day.
Dead fish.
See I told you that title was to the point.
I needed to take shots of the dead fish that are regularly washing up on the shore along a huge stretch of the gulf coastline. And one dead fish, in particular.
If you haven’t experienced what is commonly known here as the red tide, then you likely have no idea where I am going with this. But I will explain in a few.
The result of the red tide is a regular holocaust of marine species and a near toxic level of fumes that make breathing while on the beach, a bit of a novelty.
I first experienced this down in Englewood the year before last at Vel’s beach house. I had driven down to hang out with him and have a beer on the beach and then spend the night just catching up back at the house. I only lasted about three minutes on the beach that evening as it felt like I had been a victim of mustard gas. I couldn’t inhale fully, nor stop coughing, and my nose was running incessantly.
Interestingly enough, there was no physical smell. Nothing smelled bad or sweet or anything. It was just that the air was unbreathable.
That’s when I first learned about red tide and while the lack of quality air eventually made it impossible for me to sleep at the house, I then read about the disastrous effect it has on marine life.
Disastrous to the point that every morning the beaches were adorned with the dead bodies of every kind of fish you can think of.
Now if this was a lone or rare incident, you would understand Florida’s reaction to the problem. But the frequency and the intensity has been increasing for years now.
Given that Florida’s beach communities are a rather important part of the tourist industry here, wouldn’t you imagine that some money grabbing politicians would get to the bottom of this and find a fix?
I have given up on these red-state morons taking any action to protect the environment or the creatures that we share it with. But surely, the folks that line their pockets must be making some noise about what is happening?
When I applied that logic at first, I arrived at the conclusion that it must be a natural phenomenon that they can’t do anything about. How else could it possibly go untackled?
I don’t feel awfully bad for the tourists when this happens although I can imagine it makes for some pretty miserable Florida visits. I do feel bad for the small businesses that are negatively affected by a drop in revenue when these tourists go inland to the theme parks instead of hanging out in bars, restaurants, and bistros at the beach.
But mostly I feel sorry for the poor creatures. Those without a vote or even a voice. Those who suffer and die in their millions.
So that got me reading more about what causes red tide and when I read just a little about it, I saw that it was algae that grows out of whack periodically and when it gets to a certain level, the water blooms red … hence the name.
An apparently it has been happening forever. It is a natural phenomenon.
Or is it? Well, yes the actual phenomenon is, but the frequency of and intensity of what is happening is not. Turns out that is a human-caused issue, specifically tied to the run off of fertilizer from intense farming into the rivers and lakes that eventually feed the gulf.
And pride of place as chief culprit is the run off from Lake Okeechobee which is not just the biggest lake in the state but resides right in the middle of intense citrus and sugar farming country. Red states are notoriously farm-friendly and very loose in terms of government control of silly little things like pollutants.
I might be stating the obvious here, but I suspect there is a sizable lobby lining the pockets of elected officials from these activities. Making matters worse is that whatever noise the small communities make about loss of business is not only drowned out by these fertilizer run-off kings, … well, frankly the theme parks have a big lobby too and they get fatter with every disillusioned beach goer.
There is a hell of a lot more money to be made at a theme park from these damn Yankees, than there is letting them lollygag on our white sand beaches for free.
Unwilling to treat the problem on a state level, local governments along the coastline areas came up with an easy answer to the symptom.
Or at least one of them. See, we can’t fix the air, And we can’t stop the algae from killing these creatures, so Florida being Florida, we send out the tractors and the clean-up crews first thing each morning to scoop up all the dead bodies that the night tides have brought in.
Hence the reason why I needed to arrive at Lido Beach early enough to beat the clean-up crew.
How pathetic is that?
The only analogy that springs to mind is where, imagine if you were eating something that was causing you to soil yourself twice a day every day. But instead of changing your eating habits, your decision is to simply always carry a couple of garment changes with you and hope that nobody notices the smell that follows you around.
Welcome to Florida. Apparently that’s our master plan of dealing with serious issues.
Of course it begs the question, how bad can it all get, even if we keep hiding the bodies and pretend the air is breathable. Does anyone really believe that it won’t get worse?
And how much worse does it have to get before these fat politicians stop counting the dollars going into their re-election funds and start counting the bodies that are needlessly being created by these symptom-treating remedies.
So, this morning, as daylight broke and I began shooting a very special shoot to highlight the problem, I looked around me. Fish carcass after fish carcass, as far as the eyes could see in both directions. There wasn’t an eye left in a socket hardly, as the only beneficiaries seemed to be the terns, gulls, and other birds that were gathered in their hundreds.
I say “seemed to be” because the toxins that kill these fish eventually damage and kills the birds also. But they don’t know. They think they have been served up an all you eat buffet of enormous proportions.
Other than ourselves, is there any creature we care about to effect a change?
If the victims were dogs, you can bet your bottom dollar, a fix would be in the works. Imagine hitting the beach every morning where dead dogs lined the shoreline as far at the eyes could see.
America loves its dogs. Wildlife? Who gives a shit.
Am I the only fool that thinks that is incredibly sad?
So this morning, we shot a mermaid. She lay there among the dead fish and we mourned her passing and the needless death that it all seemed to be.
There was a time when we pumped raw sewage into our streams and rivers, lakes, and seas. It killed untold quantities of creatures but the reason we eventually started treating it was that we couldn’t live with the smell.
We have a history of only making changes when they are for our benefit.
I paused here while writing this for a moment, trying to think of positive changes we made in the world for the betterment of creatures other than humans. Can you think of some? I am damned if I can.
So, I guess what I have arrived at is that our selfishness and disregard for any creature not human means that nothing is going to change here in the foreseeable future.
If we could just convince people that mermaids are real, therefore recognizing our harm to part-human creatures, maybe we have a chance.
But it’s only children that still care for mermaids and unicorns. And by the time they become good citizens that cast votes, they will have long forgotten such creatures and will disregard all others. Except dogs, of course.
And just in case you are wondering … each year the state drains off over 200 billion gallons of fertilizer-polluted water from Lake Okeechobee to the Caloosahatchee river, which in turn runs into the gulf near Fort Myers.
Every time a news story begins with “today in Florida..” you know they are about to point out some dumb shit that happened. The parallel between fertilizer and shit is not lost on me.
… just a thought.
Here is the shot we set out to create and beneath it are others that I thought worth sharing from my morning.
Footnote: The Army Corps of Engineers is about to release its plans for the next ten years, tomorrow, regarding the deliberate run offs from Lake Okeechobee. At the current levels they will plan to release over two trillion gallons of heavily fertilizer-polluted water into the gulf. The person with whom the buck stops is Colonel Andrew Kelly. Here is his email address, should you wish to share your thoughts with him. andrew.d.kelly@usace.army.mil
I have shared mine. So, I will possibly mysteriously disappear soon.
Enjoy(?) the pics.
