ANNA MARIA ISLAND – As Anna Maria Island continues to experience a record-breaking summer of tourist visitation, the recent bloom of red tide in surrounding areas is of obvious concern to residents. But how are tourists reacting?
The Sun recently reported on Hurricane Elsa’s minimal impact on tourism, with few tourists canceling plans to visit or cutting their trips short due to the storm, and visitors appear to have the same sentiment regarding red tide.
“We have been following the red tide situation through your paper online, as well as Facebook pages and Tampa area news from our home in Jacksonville, North Carolina,” said Janelle Smith, who is visiting Bradenton Beach with her husband and two children. “We come here every year and remember how bad it was in 2018, but we need our Anna Maria Island fix; it’s our home away from home. We hope it doesn’t stink, but we’re willing to take the risk.”
“Nobody wants to see a bunch of dead fish and spend a stinky day at the beach, but from what I’ve seen this place is almost magic,” said Tina Scott, who is visiting Holmes Beach from Jacksonville with her family. “The hurricanes seem to run from the Island like they owe it money, and you have serious red tide south and north of here, but this is some of the clearest water we have ever seen and there isn’t a single dead fish or nasty smell anywhere we have been on the Island.”
Scott is correct, there is serious red tide in Siesta Key and Longboat Key, and Tampa Bay is also experiencing a real problem. So far, Anna Maria Island has been spared the worst of it, but that is already changing, with the first Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission report of high concentrations in Bradenton Beach last Friday.
“We went parasailing yesterday and while we were a couple hundred feet in the air cruising past Coquina Beach, we saw a huge patch of brown gunk in the water a little farther out to sea than we were,” said Jaqui Jensen of Pittsburgh, adding that she would cancel a future trip if she knew red tide was present. “When we got back on the boat, we asked our guide what it was and he said it was the red tide algae bloom. When you see it from the air, you realize just how huge it is.”
Not your usual day trippers
While not many tourists seem to be leaving AMI due to the red tide, an unforeseen effect has taken place. Some visitors to Siesta Key and Longboat Key have kept their condos and hotel rooms there, but are making day trips to Anna Maria Island to enjoy the beaches free of the problems associated with red tide.
“My son and I are staying in Longboat Key, but it stinks and you start coughing as soon as you get to the beach,” said Sean Martin of Cincinnati Ohio, who added he had never heard of red tide until they watched the local news on TV and realized the cause of their beach problems. “We drove up here after talking to a guy that works at the convenience store we stopped at last night and he said to head to Coquina Beach. There’s plenty of parking and the beach doesn’t have a smell or a single dead fish that we could see.”
With record crowds visiting the Island this summer, another unforeseen effect of the red tide could be possible overcrowding of Island beaches if Anna Maria Island stays relatively red tide-free while surrounding beaches suffer more. This could cause the already heavy beach traffic and parking issues to escalate, but there is no guarantee the problem won’t hit here in force.
“It seems like everybody is confident that this thing will not affect the Island, but there is absolutely no reason to believe that,” said Anna Maria resident Doug Fisher, who has lived on the Island for seven years. “It got us a few years ago really bad, and I think there is very little chance that we will magically be spared this mess. Pinellas County is a mess, Sarasota is a mess and we are right in between. Why in the world would we think we won’t get nailed by this?”
Fisher is also concerned that if the Island doesn’t see the worst of the red tide, tourists from Siesta Key, Longboat Key and even the Tampa Bay area will flock to the Island for some red tide relief.
“I don’t know which is worse, dead fish or a four-hour wait for a pizza,” added Fisher, who is torn over adding visitors to an already overcrowded summer while dealing with the physical effects of red tide.
Whether it’s the Piney Point wastewater discharge, natural circumstances or a combination, red tide is certainly present in Gulf waters. How long it will last, what areas will be affected, how it will impact the economy, what that impact will be and how it will affect tourism are still questions that can’t be answered. But it appears that it takes a lot to keep a potential visitor from coming to the Island if they have their heart set on it. After more than a year of a pandemic, many think it’s worth the risk, and it will take more than a hurricane or some dead fish to stop that dream vacation.
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