COCOA BEACH, Fla. – Brown tide is back in the Indian River Lagoon on Tuesday after the algae bloomed earlier this year, but in the same stretches of northern lagoon, News 6 partner Florida Today reports.
The algae, Aureoumbra lagunensis, is so small that it would take 200 of its cells to stretch across the period at the end of this sentence.
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But biologists warn the damage this minuscule algae could inflict on the lagoon is huge. Brown-tide blooms block sunlight vital to the seagrass that supports much of the lagoon's marine life. It also kills shellfish such as oysters and scallops.
Brown tide's resurgence puts yet another stress on Florida's most biologically diverse and ecologically vulnerable estuary.
The same brown tide organism appeared in samples back to 2005, but it first reached bloom levels in the lagoon in August 2012, spreading from Mosquito Lagoon into the northern Indian River Lagoon near Titusville. The algae bloomed again in 2013, although less intensely.
This year's brown tide arrived much earlier in the year and now is prominent in most of the Banana River and Indian River lagoons, from Cocoa south to near Rockledge, according to Charles Jacoby, a supervising environmental scientist with the St. Johns River Water Management District.
Chlorophyll levels — an indicator of algae blooms — remain high in Mosquito Lagoon due to a mix of single-celled algae, including the organism responsible for brown tides, Jacoby said in a release.
In the summer of 2012, brown tide began in Mosquito Lagoon and moved west to the northern Indian River lagoon. It was the first bloom of the species documented in Florida. It never spread south of Titusville. But as much as 50 square miles of lagoon seagrass had already died a year earlier, after another type of algae bloomed from Titusville to Eau Gallie and a separate, concurrent bloom stretched from Eau Gallie to south of Vero Beach.
District officials hope as water temperatures dip, the brown tide will die off. But if the bloom lasts into spring, it could further thwart seagrass recovery, this time during a crucial period for the lagoon's most important plant.
Seagrass is the linchpin of the lagoon food web. It's the manatee's main diet. Mutton snapper, lane snapper, gag and red grouper, spotted sea trout, blue crabs and other marine life depend on the grass for habitat. Studies have shown one acre of seagrass can support as many as 10,000 fish.
Biologists aren't sure how brown tide got here, whether the species always resided in the lagoon or was introduced from the ballast water of a boat.
Water management district officials did not have test results available on Monday. But when levels reach 1 billion cells per liter of water, the water typically appears brown.
Read more at FloridaToday.com.