Red-tide awakening: How Florida's environmental woes could hurt GOP's Scott in Senate race

[Zorro]

By 8:30 a.m. last Monday, the temperature on the fishing pier had already risen above 90 degrees. The heat index, according to a long-suffering FM radio weatherman, was making it feel 10 degrees hotter. On the bright side, the rancid stench born of a yearlong red tide, and the abundance of dead sea life it left behind, had dissipated. But the few beachgoers lingering at the shoreline still seemed uncertain whether to enter the pea-green, murky Gulf water for a swim.

Wearing swim trunks and a floppy sun hat and holding a fishing pole, Rob Merlino, 54, watched the would-be bathers from the pier, sympathetic to their dilemma.

“There were days when they were saying, ‘The water’s fine. The red tide is gone,’ and it was brown as poop out here,” Merlino told Yahoo News, going on to describe the burning sensation that an aerosolized Karenia brevis algae bloom causes when inhaled. “You couldn’t breathe!”

A self-described “right-wing libertarian type,” Merlino grew so incensed over what he saw as Gov. Rick Scott’s inadequate response to the red tide that has plagued Florida’s Gulf coast for an entire year that on Sept. 17, he decided to send him a message.

https://news.yahoo.com/red-tide-awakening-floridas-environmental-woes-hurt-gops-scott-senate-race-090044270.html

[redstateblues]

1. Make Red Tide Rick own it