ugh, Red Tide

- Wednesday blog lite

I was walking across the Safeway parking lot the other day and suddenly caught whiff of a ... fragrance I immediately recognized, even though decades have passed since the last time I smelled it. 

Sure enough, when I got back to the marina, I noticed a peculiar yellow-brown tint to the water.

Red Tide ... basically a rapid overpopulation of algae, which robs oxygen from the water and creates a fish dead zone.

If you're wondering what red tide smells like, imagine week-old eggs rotting in the sun.  Now multiply the effect times about 20, and then imagine it's everywhere.

Today folks around the docks were speculating about how much longer it'd be before the first fish began floating to the surface; the consensus opinion is "sometime later today."  

Two folks told me that two years ago the fish kill was so severe that the marina basin- including all the slips- was quite literally carpeted with dead fish ... which had to be scooped out with nets.

Ugh.