WorldA state of emergency has been declared in Florida as the worst red tide in a decade blackens the ocean water, killing dolphins, sea turtles and fish at a relentless pace. More than 100 tons of dead sea creatures have been shoveled up from smelly, deserted beaches in tourist areas along Florida's southwest coast as a result of the harmful algal bloom this month alone. n just the past week, 12 dolphins washed ashore dead in Sarasota County, typically the toll seen in an entire year. "It was devastating," said Randall Wells, director of the Chicago Zoological Society's Sarasota Dolphin Research Program, the world's longest-running study of a wild dolphin population, under way since 1970. A natural phenomenon, red tide is caused by a microscopic single-celled organism called Karenia brevis, unique to the Gulf of Mexico.

Source: Sunday Times August 16, 2018 06:34 UTC