The glowing red ocean.

[Dinner]

It seems that red tide has come to the waters off of southern California and now the water has a distinct red color to it. Red tide is cause by a sudden population boom of phtoplankton or algae, which turns the water a distinct red color. It is believed that the trigger for these events is when off shore currents bring an upwelling of nutrient rich water from deep in the ocean; with so much extra food in the water the phtoplanktons go crazy and reproduce so quickly that all of the water near the coast actually changes colors.

The really cool thing is that at night these phytoplankton are actually bioluminescent meaning they emit light at night time so people sitting on the beach at night can watch as glowing red waves crash on the shore.

I've heard about this but I've never seen it before. I couple of my friends called me today and we're planning on having a little bonfire at the beach tonight so we can watch the show. Have any of you seen this before?

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20030925-9999_7m25redtide.html

[Whaleboy]

That sounds so cool! I had a police helicopter hovering above my house for about an hour last night .

[Japher]

Don't eat shellfish for a while... thanks

[Dinner]

Does red tide cause shellfish to become poisonous?

[Harovan]

That link doesn't work.

[Japher]

Does red tide cause shellfish to become poisonous?

That's what I hear

[Dinner]

I think I fixed the link.

[st_swithin]

So that's a 'no' on the clam chowder, then?

Stupid dinoflagellates.

[Japher]

Nope. The beaches and red tide areas are usually off limits to harvesting during these time. Yet, I generally play it safe and avoid most uncanned shellfish during the fall...

[chequita guevara]

Our shellfish is better.

[Chemical Ollie]

Where's the pictures?

[CorpusScorpius]

we have red tide happen here on the Gulf Coast atleast once a year. If u have any respritory type problems dont go to the beach. A few summers back, I had an uncontrollable coughing spell due to Red Tide & had to stop fishing & go home......

[MichaeltheGreat]

If you dive, you can harvest shellfish below the first thermocline (typically 30-35 feet in SD waters), but that's pointless because the good stuff way deeper than the first thermocline (white abs, illegal for normal peasants but yummy and the pay is great), or else is intertidal.

The stuff you could harvest below the thermocline, when it's in season is primarily spiny lobsters, and they're in a food chain that goes back to plankton siphoners, so you do get an accumulation of biotoxins, as well as a contact hazard for some people from being in the water. Same thing with Sheepshead, which is a local game fish that feeds off of spinies - can't eat them either.

Sustained red tides severely **** up coastal ecosystems, and they can be a long time recovering.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Our shellfish is better.

Yeah, shellfish and crustaceans here are a joke, now that abs are no-take for anything other than scientific collection permits and all that's left is spiny lobster.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Japher
Nope. The beaches and red tide areas are usually off limits to harvesting during these time. Yet, I generally play it safe and avoid most uncanned shellfish during the fall...

You don't want anything harvested off the California coast within the top two thermoclines anyway. Heavy metal toxicity from pollution is bad.