09-27-2003, 03:55 PM
fishfather: Good explanation. To we locals Red Tides have been around since we can remember. To us it means steady winds offshore and cold water. Although the thickness of the "red"is usually only inches thick, sometimes it gets so thick it might go down 4 to 5 feet. In the 1980's it killed off every mussel in Alamitos Bay along with hundreds of octopus and fish.The smell was unbelievable. The redness is actually dead and decaying plankton which depletes all the oxygen in the area which causes the fish to drown. If you note the drift of the red it builds in LA Harbor where it stagnates from lack of sufficient ocean currents to disperse it.
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