Florida Red Tide Status

FWC Fish and Wildlife Research Institute publishes the current status, and the panel at the top of this page shows what it is reporting right now, reproduced as issued with the time of its most recent update attached. When the agency is reporting nothing, the panel says so. For the official version, go to FWC Fish and Wildlife Research Institute directly.

Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission states: "Red tides most often form in late summer and early fall and persist through winter to spring." On that basis the usual stretch runs August 1 to April 30, with the busiest weeks October 1 to December 31. FWC puts the usual onset in late summer or early fall and says blooms persist through winter into spring, which is why a Florida red tide often runs through the winter tourist season rather than the summer one. A quiet August says nothing about November. That is a climatological typical and not a forecast: blooms happen outside it, and some years produce very little.

Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission publishes this wording: "Red tide can cause skin irritation, rashes, and burning/sore eyes. Do not swim in or around red tide." That is the agency's sentence, quoted, and the agency is the authority. Whether a particular spot is open on a particular day is decided by the people posting signs at the access point, who looked at that specific water today.

FWC Fish and Wildlife Research Institute, NOAA NCCOS harmful algal bloom forecast, FWC Fish Kill Hotline, Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, Division of Aquaculture, Florida Poison Control Centers. FWC Fish and Wildlife Research Institute status reports issued Friday afternoons. The sample map is updated daily at 5 p.m. Eastern.. Each of them is linked on this page, with a phone number where one is published.

No, and this is the single most common misunderstanding about it. FWC associates visible water discoloration only with its highest category, more than a million cells per litre. Shellfish harvesting closures start at 5,000 cells per litre, two hundred times lower, and respiratory irritation is possible from its very low band upward. Water that looks completely normal can still carry enough cells to close beds and make people cough.

Harvest closures are legal orders issued by Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, Division of Aquaculture, they change without warning, and getting one wrong is a hospital matter. Check Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, Division of Aquaculture directly, on the day, every time. FWC states that shellfish harvesting closures follow when Karenia brevis abundance equals or exceeds 5,000 cells per litre, which sits inside its very low category. A count that looks small on a map can still close a bed.

No. Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission's own framing is that these are recurring events rather than one-off ones, and the monitoring programmes behind them run whether or not there is anything to find. A season with little to report is a normal part of the pattern rather than the end of it, which is why this page leads with when blooms normally happen and only then shows what is being reported today.

It is a separate NOAA product from the cell counts. NOAA's National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science combines the most recent cell counts with forecast wind to predict what people standing on specific named beaches are likely to feel over roughly the next day, and publishes a category for each station. It answers a different question from the cell count, which is why this page shows both and labels each with the agency that issued it rather than merging them into one number. NOAA only runs stations where there is something to forecast, so the list of beaches changes through the year and is often empty.

FWC issues its status report on Friday afternoons and updates its sample map daily at 5 p.m. Eastern. The underlying export runs at 4:45 p.m. This page shows the export time on the panel and flags anything older than 36 hours, because a sample map from last week is a different thing from one from this afternoon.

Red tide means a marine bloom, in the Gulf of Mexico usually Karenia brevis, which produces brevetoxins and causes respiratory irritation carried in sea spray. Blue-green algae means freshwater cyanobacteria such as Microcystis, which bloom in lakes and slow rivers and produce a different family of toxins. Different organisms, different water, different monitoring programmes, and a status for one says nothing about the other. This page covers Karenia brevis red tide.