Station in Sykes Creek south of 520 showed dissolved oxygen below 1mg/l on the 18th and then bottoming out for several hours near 0 mg/l on the 19th and 20th.

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It's killing everything from top to bottom, even the oysters.

This is freaking horrible.

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I was right.

So what causes the daily fluctuation in the DO and Chl readings? Is that a tidal signature?

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Tons of dead mullet, sheephead, and catfish in my CB canal.......some trout and reds, but maybe fish that mainly eat plants/algaE/ barnacles are dying first....... is it(THE DOODOO) in the plant life?

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I troll 2L.com to be a better person in real life

Oxygen fluctuates in response to production by plants during the day and uptake by everything else at night. Crazy thing about oxygen with this bloom is how much time it spent at >100% saturation in the lead up to the crash.

But it is normal in an algae bloom situation for dissolved oxygen to get really high during period of maximum photosynthetic activity during the day and then decline at night when the plankton respire.

Chlorophyll in the in continuous field samples is measured by flourescence. I don't know if that daily fluctuation is real or an artifact of flourescence changes. I think that fluorescence of the chlorophyll changes as photosynthetic activity changes. I've seen papers where fluorescence change is used to measure changes in photosynthetic activity. Sort of like when the chlorophyll is all charged up by the sun just before the sample gets pulled through the sensor then it fluoresces more than it does at night. If that is the case then the actual chlorophyll concentration isn't changing daily like that. Since chlorophyll is used as a proxy for phytoplankton abundance/biomass then I would expect that there is a calibration to correct for fluorescence changes. But plankton isn't my thing so maybe somebody that knows more about it can answer better.

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https://www.ysi.com/File%20Library/Documents/Technical%20Notes/T612-Alternate-Calibration-Methods-for-the-YSI-6025-Chlorophyll-Sensor.pdf

The link won't attach.

Block, right click, hit "open link"

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I was right.

https://www.ysi.com/File%20Lib...Chlorophyll-Sensor.pdf

Fixed

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GOP:

Gaslight
Obstruct
Project

falling off the front page here

(as well as the tv news, newspaper, etc etc etc)

what else is new?

Well, chlorophyll is returning to "high normal" - my term not an official one -

at the north IRL kilroys, around 40-50 ug/L.

Maybe the bloom is finally fizzling.  

Three months worth.

Long time to shade out the deeper seagrass.

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We  took our little Proline center consol for a run out of Manatee Cove marina at Patrick Sunday evening and saw lots of mullet jumping,  large ones,  and some smaller fish pods that the pelicans were diving for.  Also saw a good sized gator(possibly cleaning up the remainder of the dead fish?) in the water by the water drain.  On the beach near the channel we saw some horseshoe crabs and although they were on their backs for some reason they were kicking their legs so they were alive.  Also noticed quite a few wading herons and egrets,  and saw pods of dolphin on the south side of the Pineda causeway chasing fish.  Saw manatees as well.  Maybe it isn't as grim as I had suspected.  At least there are still mullet around.  I am hoping they are the survivors and not the ones yet to die.

Just saw an article in tcpalm stating that ORCA funding has been cut and they are going to have to scrap some stations.

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That's correct.  Fortunately there's a few stations funded from other sources.  

A bunch of USGS gages along the St. Johns have the following message:

 

ATTENTION - Continuous temperature, specific conductance and dissolved oxygen data collection at this station will be discontinued on October 1, 2016, unless a new cooperating agency or alternative funding can be identified. If you have an interest in the collection of data at this gage, or are able to assist with funding beyond October 1, 2016, please contact Darrell Lambeth at dlambeth@usgs.gov.

 

 

USGS has been monitoring water quality at numerous sites along the St. Johns River with funding from the St. Johns River Water Management District.

That funding must have been pulled too.

 

 

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Water in Rockledge/Cocoa looks terrible. It had been looking decent.

It is now dark reddish brown, characteristic of Pyrodinium. Bioluminescence is vivid. I'd say it is reaching bloom concentrations.

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Floaters in the Banana River again today. Don't know how widespread.

Dissolved oxygen measured by a station at the 520 causeway in the Banana is showing a massive diurnal fluctuation for the last 30 days. Must have gotten pretty low last night.

 

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Edited: 08/05/2016 at 06:16 PM by scombrid

Green lawns brown lagoon.

Companies are laying down the juice right now here in Rockledge. Lots of St. Auggie looking super green. Don't get that deep color in mid summer without supplemental nitrogen.

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True that.  

One of my neighbors got "treated' for chinchbugs and boy did that lawn green up.

The "pros" are not on board with the (toothless) ban.

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Funny the spray tech sprays and then puts up the little pesticide warning sign and two days later the lawn is practically glowing green. That's some magic stuff.

 

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 ,

Edited: 08/15/2016 at 04:19 PM by SurferMic

I ride tropical trail up to crooked mile when I can after work and on weekends.  I get faint whiffs of bloom down toward the Mather's bridge area but not strong lately. 

Strong pyrodinium bloom on IRL in the Rockledge/Cocoa area. Very patchy but the patches are dense. Low intensity fish kill from at least River Ridge development to Cocoa Village today. There were hog chokers, sheepshead, and puffers gasping at the surface this morning at daybreak. This evening there's a funk in the air and scattered dead fish. Its mostly puffers but I saw a mix of other species too with birds and dolphins picking off the weak that weren't quite dead yet.

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The river looked camo between Cocoa Beach and Merritt Island.

Some serious blooms springing up, let's just hope the stay sporadic.

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I was right.

it's not any better up north. i fished dummits cove and a little north of haulover on the IRL side the past two weeks. the water level is the lowest that i think i have ever seen in that area. on top of that i don't think i have ever seen so many tailing catfish. i got fooled a few times from a distance (in the morning) thinking it was reds, nope. tailing or not tailing, the catfish population is nuts. came across 4-5 reds the entire day in really skinny water. almost had one swim right into my kayak he was so consumed with feeding. i have almost stopped fishing anywhere south of haulover down to mathers over the past year. i'm sure there are pockets of clean water but finding them in a kayak isn't the best method but that's all i got. i remember the days of gin clear water, those were the days.....i hope those days come back.