Florida Blackwater

A giant area of mysterious "black water" in Florida Bay was first detected in satellite images in mid-December 2001. The area expanded over time, and at its peak in February, the "black water" covered an estimated 700 square miles, larger than Lake Okeechobee, from Naples to Key West.

Researchers who have been studying the area of "black water" have no clear explanation. Some marine biologists, like Scott Willis at the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, believe the black water may be an algal bloom. Algae are microscopic, often unicellular, plants that live in the ocean and serve as food for many fish and other marine life. When they multiply rapidly and become very dense it is called a "bloom." Although algal blooms are not rare in Florida waters, blooms of this size are.

The "black water" does seem to be associated with a diatom, a type of alga, yet it does not appear to be killing fish like the infamous "red tide" (now renamed "Harmful Algal Bloom" or HAB). HABs, such as Karenia brevis, produce potent neurotoxins that kill higher forms of life such as zooplankton, shellfish, fish, birds, marine mammals, and even humans that feed either directly or indirectly on them. (See Red Tide for more information.) Yet fishermen have reported few fish, either dead or alive, in the "black water," in locations where the fish are normally found in abundance. The fishermen also said the water looked "snotty," "like sewage," and "nasty." Their most surprising observation was "schools of fish that swam into the black water began jumping and running at high speed and acting oddly" (Naples Daily News, March 24, 2002), as if trying to leap out of the water. The fishermen had never seen this before.

Although marine scientists suspected the area might be a "dead zone," Mote Marine Laboratory, in Sarasota, FL, found there was oxygen in the water column. Scientists also theorized that it had something to do with an inrush of fresh water and runoff from a river near the Everglades, but water testing disproved this. Another theory is that it might somehow be linked to a recent red tide event near Naples, just to the north.

As of May 4, the Florida Marine Research Institute, of St. Petersburg, FL, stated: "At this time, investigators are still undecided about the initial cause, its composition during January and February, and its effect on Gulf marine communities."

There may be an explanation that has been overlooked. On July 19, 2001, an experiment to alter weather took place over the Atlantic Ocean, 10 miles off the coast of Jupiter, FL. Eight thousand pounds of a product called Dyn-O-Gel, a powdery polymer substance that forms a gel when mixed with water, was sprayed from a jet into a storm cloud. (Dyn-O-Gel) Within moments the cloud had vanished from the radar screens. The Dyn-O-Gel had combined with the moisture in the storm cloud to form a gel that, presumably, fell into the ocean. According to the producer, Dyn-O-Mat, of Riviera Beach, FL, the gel is "bio-degradable, non toxic and not hazardous to anyone's health." (See Dyn-O-Mat.)

And yet, within six months, strange, "gelatinous blobs ... and spider-weblike filaments" (Naples Daily News, March 24, 2002) were found floating in Florida Bay. The Naples Daily News, March 19, 2002, reported: "Fishermen who've spent a lifetime on the water say they've never seen anything like the black mass of water that is now breaking up in the reefs and churning waters where the gulf meets the Atlantic."

If these gelatinous blobs are leftover Dyn-O-Gel, the next question is how did they get from the Atlantic Ocean into Florida Bay?