Okeechobee / Sugar = St. Lucie / Stuart areas of the Lagoon.

Fertilizer / septic / stormwater = Banana River, north and central Indian River (north of Sebastian Inlet), Mosquito Lagoon

Although they are all the "Indian River Lagoon",

they are separate hydrologic units with some unique issues.   

Some of the problems overlap, some are separate.

South brevard clearing up nicely!

continuous monitor at 192 causeway show a very nice drop from 300 to 50ug/L

Banana river at 520 causeway still 400

titusville, north IRL, closer to 100

"normal" (if there is such a thing) would be lower double digits 

http://webapub.sjrwmd.com/agws10/hdswq/

I could see rocks in about 1 foot of water under the light at the end of my street this morning in Rockledge when I went for a paddle. That is an improvement. Crazy to call that an improvement but for the last couple of months you couldn't see 2 inches below the surface. The tiny brown tide plankton make for very opaque water.

Banana River still looked incomprehensibly bad at the race by 520 on Saturday and at 1000 islands where I took some guests for a paddle sheltered from the wind Saturday PM. Ulva was pilled up thick too around 1000 islands. Nasty.

Bloom has to run out of gas sometime. It hasn't rain significantly in a few weeks.

A lot of people were blaming the lack of cold for the bloom but the lagoon bottomed out at 14C which isn't far from normal minimum winter temp. Heavy rain in January poured gas on the fire that started in November/December.

People associate the cold with the clear water but it is really the dry season reduction in nutrient load that usually brings us clear water in the winter/spring. Plus this "brown tide" organism doesn't behave exactly like the native plankton. It has different nutrient/thermal/light requirements.

Question is whether or not this mess clears out in time for the sea grass to grow now that the growing season is on us. Without the sea grass to take up the wet season nutrient pulse then other plankton like the dinoflagellates that were causing episodic blooms last summer are going to go crazy.

Saw an update on seagrass recovery at the IRL Symposium last month.

Big disparity on recovery rates but some was evident.  Strange though,

areas that should recover fast, near Seb Inlet for example, clear water etc.,

had lousey recovery rates compared to some areas where water clarity was worse.

This bloom will be another setback as deeper grasses are almost certainly shaded out.  

I'm seeing reports of fish kills in sykes, 1000 islands, and other banana river areas. Anybody that is seeing these first hand should report to fwc fish kill hotline. At last then in is recorded. I noticed a Florida Today article about the fish kill referencing FWC and it looked like an isolated report that the hotline got from someone. All points bulleting needs to go out on this.

That's a lot of oysters!

Continuous water quality monitoring station at 520 causeway shows a drop from 500 ug/L down to 100 ug/L with dissolved oxygen bottoming out below 1 mg/l and that is out in the open lagoon. Fairly classic bloom collapse scenario.