State wildlife officials detected the red tide organism Karenia brevis in 25 water samples along Florida’s East Coast over the past week, including one sample in Nassau County that reached bloom concentrations.
According to state monitoring reports, bloom concentrations—defined as more than 100,000 cells per liter—were identified in a single Nassau County sample.
In total, East Coast monitoring showed background-to-medium levels in Nassau County, background-to-low levels in Duval County, and background-to-very-low levels in St. Johns County.
Satellite imagery provided by the University of South Florida (USF) and the NOAA National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science revealed elevated chlorophyll levels across Nassau and Duval counties on August 19.
On the Gulf Coast, researchers found Karenia brevis at background concentrations in two offshore samples collected near Pinellas County. No traces of the organism were detected in Northwest Florida over the same period.
Despite the East Coast detections, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission reported no fish kills linked to red tide over the past seven days. State agencies also received no reports of respiratory irritation, a common symptom caused by airborne red tide toxins.
Short-term forecasts from the USF-FWC Collaboration for Prediction of Red Tides project variable movement of surface and subsurface waters extending from Pinellas County south to northern Monroe County over the next three and a half days.
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