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Tag: Mark Taylor

red tide beach

Red tide lingers

Written by Joe Hendricks on . Posted in Uncategorized.

ANNA MARIA ISLAND – Today’s red tide update from Manatee County indicates improving conditions on some Anna Maria Island beaches, but red tide levels remain high in the water at both ends of the Island, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

Red tide levels remain high at the Rod & Reel Pier in Anna Maria, the Longboat Pass boat ramp in Bradenton Beach and the Palma Sola Bay Bridge, according to Wednesday’s report from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

Red tide was present in very low to high concentrations in 11 water samples collected from Manatee County. Levels ranged from 5-25 percent higher in Manatee County from Aug. 18-24 compared to the previous week, according to the FWC.

Respiratory irritation was reported from Aug. 16-23 at Coquina Beach and Manatee Beach, and fish kills continue.

Aerial surveys from Pinellas to northern Charlotte counties, including Manatee County, also indicate the presence of offshore blooms of the marine cyanobacterium Trichodesmium, which is not harmful to people.

According to today’s Manatee County beach update:

  • Beaches are open
  • Coquina Bayside, Coquina Beach and Cortez Beach north to Bean Point are clean
  • Bayfront Park has minor seaweed
  • Coquina North and South Boat Ramps are clean
  • Crews are working to rake the beaches as needed
  • Red tide signs are posted at affected beaches and will remain until the red tide bloom is over.

Manatee County beach rake operator Mark Taylor said the beaches today are “Much better. The water still doesn’t look right because that stuff is just offshore.”

As for the type of dead marine life on the beach Thursday morning, Taylor said, “Just a few catfish, horseshoe crabs, queen crabs, etc. But it’s very light. The east wind is definitely our friend for now.”

RTU AM Beach
This jogger enjoyed a run on a clean beach in Anna Maria this morning. – Chantelle Lewin | Sun

After taking a walk on the beach in Anna Maria this morning, Sun Advertising Director Chantelle Lewin said that area of beach was clear.

“All’s good. Looks like an awesome weekend,” Lewin said.

As has been the case since the red tide reached Anna Maria Island on Aug. 3, the impacts of red tide vary from day to day and location to location.

On Thursday morning, Bradenton Beach resident Steve Schewe said, “It smells in Bradenton Beach and it stinks on Longboat Key.”

Residential canals

On Wednesday, the residential canal at 21st Place North contained only a few dead and floating fish, but a block away the end of the residential canal at 20th Place North was filled with dead fish and horseshoe crabs. One of the floating fish was filled with maggots and flies were active on several others.

RTU BB Canal II
This residential canal on 20th Place North in Bradenton Beach remains filled with dead marine life and seagrass. – Joe Hendricks | Sun

On the mainland, the Coral Shores canals along Cortez Road that looked horrific two weeks ago had only a handful of floating fish still remaining Wednesday afternoon.

Last week, the Coral Shores canals were among those cleaned by APTIM – the Boca Raton firm contracted by Manatee County at a cost of $140,000 for one week’s worth of cleanup services. APTIM’s services were discontinued at the conclusion of the workday on Aug. 24.

RTU Coral Shores Canal
On Wednesday, this Coral Shores canal looked much better than it did two weeks ago. – Joe Hendricks | Sun

The canals at the nearby Mt. Vernon community were also free of any large masses of dead fish on Wednesday, but a couple of dead horseshoe crabs were spotted floating in one of the canals.

On Monday, the county announced that it was transitioning to a voluntary “Nets to Neighbors” maintenance and light cleanup program that includes nets, buckets and dumpsters provided by the county in certain areas. The Coral Shores dumpster contained no dead fish or red tide debris as of Wednesday afternoon.

RTU Coral Shores Dumpster
On Wednesday, this dumpster in the Coral Shores neighborhood contained no dead fish. – Joe Hendricks | Sun

Local fishermen

After being contracted by the city of Anna Maria for a second time, Cortez fishermen Nathan Meschelle, Tanner Pelkey, Matt Smith and Michael Dolan spent Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday down at the former and future site of the Anna Maria City Pier cleaning seagrass and a very few number of dead fish off the beach.

Pelkey said the presence of seagrass is a normal occurrence. Meschelle said he thinks the red tide is dissipating and he hopes to return to fishing as soon as possible. Over the past weekend, Meschelle was contracted to do some canal cleanup for the Wild Oak Bay community on Cortez Road.

“That was some pretty nasty stuff down there,” Meschelle said. “We cleaned over 1,000 square yards of carnage that had drifted in.”

RTU Cortez Fishermen
These Cortez fishermen spent three days cleaning a stretch of city beach in Anna Maria. – Joe Hendricks | Sun

 – Cindy Lane contributed to this report.

For more information, visit The Sun’s Red Tide Resources.

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Beach raker Tide Raker Read

Beach raker to the rescue

Written by Joe Hendricks on . Posted in Beach, Outdoors.

ANNA MARIA ISLAND – Manatee County equipment operator Mark Taylor has played a crucial role in the red tide cleanup efforts taking place on the Island’s Gulfside beaches.

Using a tractor to pull a piece of equipment known as a Barber beach rake, Taylor’s recently been working seven days a week, up to 12 hours a day, removing dead fish and other marine life from the beaches.

Taylor has worked for the county for 18 years. His beach raking duties are usually limited to the public beaches, but those county-funded efforts were recently expanded to include the entire Gulfside shoreline after dead fish killed by red tide began washing ashore in early August.

“I’m typically the only beach rake operating. I have got a backup rig and we’ve got an operator in Coquina Beach and Cortez Beach (in Bradenton Beach) that’s been working down there,” Taylor said after his workday ended on Friday.

Pulled behind a tractor, the beach raker gathers up dead fish and seagrass and drops it into a hopper that’s later emptied into a dumpster or the front-end loader recently put into service.

“Basically, I’ve been taking care of Holmes Beach and Anna Maria. It’s a lot of beach to cover and sometimes you have to make multiple passes because the fish are too thick to make a single line. If they’re spread out you’ve got to make two or three or four passes to get them all. When you’ve got this many fish it’s more like damage control. Instead of trying to get the last one up and make it perfect, you’re trying to get 85-90 percent of them off the beach because it’s coming back with the next tide,” Taylor explained.

He said the heaviest concentration of dead fish has typically been between Longboat Pass in Bradenton Beach and the Martinique condominiums in Holmes Beach.

Taylor works in an enclosed cab, and he’s been wearing a facemask and a scarf over his face, but he still feels the burn of the red tide-tainted air.

“It burns my eyes through the day. When you’re out there 12 hours a day breathing that stuff it’s hard on you,” he said.

Taylor was asked if he’s seen red tide this bad before.

“I have. I’ve been here all my life,” the 68-year-old Cortez native and former commercial fisherman said.

Beach Raker Taylor
County employee Mark Taylor has been working seven days a week cleaning up the Island beaches impacted by red tide. – Mark Taylor | Submitted

As for what he’s seeing on the beaches, Taylor said, “We’ve gotten a turtle or two, some tarpon, a tremendous amount of snook, a few grouper and a few jewfish. Most of the volume is grunts, pinfish, catfish, horseshoe crabs and eels – the most eels I’ve ever seen.”

Taylor said he saw less dead fish on Saturday, but the air felt more toxic. He said he saw beached redfish for the first time and also a good-sized dead turtle.

Taylor said the dead fish were light on Sunday as he worked his way from Manatee Public Beach to Bean Point and back.

“Everything looks much better today,” he said that day.

Taylor said conditions were a little better overall Monday morning, but heavier in some places.

“Seems to be worse on the south end of the Island, back to the pass. Lots of horseshoe crabs today,” he said via text, noting that he hadn’t yet headed north.

Taylor said the beach cleanup continues to be a group effort.

“I’m just one of many out here. There are a lot of people in various departments working on this,” he said.

Efforts praised

County Commissioner and Holmes Beach resident Carol Whitmore shared her praise for Taylor and others.

“Mark has led the efforts to clean our beach parks. We can’t thank Mark and the county staff enough for working very long hours to keep up with the red tide fish kill. Carmine DeMilio (Parks Operation Manager) has stepped up and let Mark do what he does best,” Whitmore said.

Anna Maria Public Works Manager Dean Jones also praised Taylor.

“Mark has been working 12-13-hour days on the beaches. His family is one of the original families that settled Cortez. His roots run deep in this community, and he is one of the many stewards of the local environment. He is one of the nicest and kindest guys you will ever meet, and I am proud to know him,” Jones said.

Beach hole

Holes on beach dangerous to people, turtles

Written by Cindy Lane on . Posted in Featured, Outdoors, Sea turtles.

Holes on the beach are no longer accidents waiting to happen.

Two children recently got trapped in a hole that they dug on the beach, Manatee County beach raker Mark Taylor said. A man jumped in, pushed them out of the hole, and got stuck himself before finally making it out.

After trying to fill in the hole, shoveling by hand, Taylor climbed up on the tractor and began using it to fill in the hole.

The tractor got stuck.

Beach hole
Beginning May 1, chairs and other objects must be removed from the beach at night, and holes, which can trap turtles, must be filled in. – Mark Taylor | Submitted

One hole he filled in was so big – deeper than the tractor is tall – that it took another tractor and a four-wheel-drive pickup truck to get the tractor out of the hole. When the holes are as deep as the tractor is tall, the tractor could flip over, he said.

And it’s not only the big ones that are dangerous.

“What would happen if you stepped into a small four-foot-deep hole?” he asked. “You can do as much damage with a small, deep hole as a large one.”

About a third of the people he asks to fill in the holes before they leave the beach actually do, Taylor said. When he comes back the next day in the tractor, he finds that people have sometimes placed chairs around their hole to protect it so they can keep digging in it the next day.

By law, that must stop on May 1, the beginning of the six-month sea turtle nesting and hatching season on the Island.

Chairs and other objects must be removed from the beach at night, and holes, which can trap turtles, must be filled in.

But Suzi Fox, director of Anna Maria Island Turtle Watch and Shorebird Monitoring, is also worried about people.

Beach hole
Holes and tunnels on the beach are safety hazards for people and wildlife.

Without ordinances in all three Island cities, police can do nothing, even when they spot a dangerous hole in the sand, she said.

Anna Maria is working on an ordinance, Fox said, suggesting that Holmes Beach and Bradenton Beach use the same ordinance to save money on attorney fees and make enforcement standardized Island-wide.

“I think the quicker, the better,” Fox said, since turtle season is only a few days away. “The less obstacles turtles have to work around, the more energy they will save for their nesting duties.”

Other ordinances around the state limit shovels to 14 inches, including the handle, she said.

“It’s surprising how much damage you can do with toy shovels,” Taylor said, citing a Panama City ordinance that prohibits metal shovels and imposes a $25 fine for holes bigger than a washtub.

“It used to be young guys on spring break, but this year it’s been more young families with their kids” digging the holes, he said.

This week, Taylor is using the beach rake tractor to smooth out the shoreline to make it easier for nesting turtles to access the beach.

No turtles had nested as of Monday, April 23, Fox said, adding that Turtle Watch volunteers have been scouring the beaches at dawn each morning since April 1.

They have found two snowy plover nests, a threatened species in Florida, and black skimmers – another state threatened species – are starting to nest in Holmes Beach, she said.

Loggerhead turtles, the most common sea turtles on the Island, already are coming ashore to nest on Florida’s east coast, she said, adding that it won’t be long for the west coast girls to arrive here.

Last year’s sea turtle season on the Island was a record, with 488 nests and 25,379 hatchlings that made it to the Gulf of Mexico.