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Summary of the Florida Red Tide Planning and Coordination Meeting

A Florida Red Tide Planning and Coordination Meeting was held November 6–7, 1996. Florida red tide researchers and colleagues discussed and summarized information and research needs.

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Karen A. Steidinger¹, Beverly S. Roberts¹, Patricia A. Tester², Carmelo R. Tomas¹ and Gabriel A. Vargo³

¹Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Florida Marine Research Institute, 100 8th Avenue SE, St. Petersburg, FL 33701; ²National Marine Fisheries Service, Southeast Fisheries Science Center, Beaufort Laboratory, Beaufort, NC 28516; ³University of South Florida, Department of Marine Science, 140 7th Avenue S, St. Petersburg, FL 33701

INTRODUCTION

A Florida Red Tide Planning and Coordination Meeting was held November 6–7, 1996 and hosted by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection's Florida Marine Research Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida. The purpose of the meeting was to bring Florida red tide researchers and their colleagues together to:

1. Identify and review critical information gaps in the knowledge of Florida red tides that relate to marine resource management issues;
2. Identify research and other avenues of investigation that can provide the missing information;
3. Learn who is doing what and how we can maximize human, physical, and financial resources through partnerships and collaborations; and
4. Produce a research outline based on identified information needs as the product of the meeting.

Many of the attendees were collaborators or contractors on state projects and have diverse expertise in harmful algal bloom dynamics, biotoxins, shellfish biology and management, endangered species biology and management, remote sensing, oceanography and circulation patterns, public health and epidemiology, aquatic health, and other fields. Thirty participants attended the meeting and represented academia (9), state agencies (12), federal agencies (6), and other institutes and laboratories (3). These scientists were from Florida, Texas, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Massachusetts. The appendices contain the agenda, a list of attendees and their affiliation, and handouts including a draft bibliography on Gulf of Mexico harmful algal blooms and their impacts as part of an EPA Gulf of Mexico Program grant. Attendees were asked to contribute to the bibliography to make it as complete as possible so that it can be later distributed on a floppy disk.

One of the handouts was a table containing columns indicating "what we know about red tides" and "what we do not know about red tides" framed as questions. This information served as an introduction to Florida red tides and provided a format for discussing data gaps and approaches to filling those gaps. It was agreed that this format would be used by the working groups to add additional questions. The first day, three groups were formed with each group assigned a mix of expertise to address the same questions. On the second day, attendees split into two groups, "Living Marine Resources and Public Health" and "Bloom Dynamics," to finalize the questions, action items, or approaches needed (research or other investigations). This summary is based on the results of those sessions.

On the following pages, action items are listed as bullet statements and indicate suggested research or activity to address specific data gaps. When these action items are repeated or redundant between discussion topics (i.e., bloom dynamics and living marine resources and public health) or between questions in the same topic, the specific action item should be interpreted to be a high priority.

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Brief Historical Perspective (28 KB)

Bloom Dynamics (24 KB)

Summary of the Florida Red Tide Research Planning and Coordination Meeting, November 6–7, 1996 (22 KB)

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