‘Gumbo’ of blue-green algae stinks up Manatee and Sarasota beaches
Last year, when a persistent Red Tide algae bloom touched all three of Florida's coasts, Southwest Florida had to put up with it the longest. The toxic algae stuck around Lee, Charlotte, Sarasota and Manatee county beaches for months on end, driving away tourists and depositing dead fish galore on the shore.
Now a new algae bloom is threatening some of those same beaches. It's not Red Tide. It's a type of blue-green algae known as "Lyngbya," which has long caused problems in the state's springs.
It might give swimmers a rash, but it doesn't kill anything but your appetite.
"It makes you want to go inside and close your windows and turn on your air conditioning, because it stinks," Holmes Beach Mayor Judy Titsworth, granddaughter of the city’s namesake, John “Jack” Holmes Sr., said this week.