Why do they call it 'Red Tide' when it's really Green?

There are two types of people in the world: Sunset people, and sunrise people. I'm a sunset person, as you could probably gather from the photos in my previous post. Lorie, on the other hand, is a sunrise person. She got up early this morning and sat on the lanai, observing the sun's daily debut.

Soon after, we saw the beach setup guy drilling holes in the sand for his beach umbrellas. Later, a tractor arrived and began to groom the sand, removing day old footprints, bottle caps, and sea gull droppings. We watched this procedure with fascination. We dubbed the device the "Sandboni".

("Sandboni" is a registered trademark of DontLikeSpam Enterprises Incorporated, all rights reserved).

The beach was nice in the morning, but around 2:00, what looked like an aquatic, nasty, green cloud started moving from east to west across the bay. It was frightening to see. We were at the condo when we noticed it, and we didn't have any idea what it was. But it was impossible to miss as it moved across the gulf like a fast-moving cold front, consuming the crystal clear water and bringing murky, brown ickiness in its wake. Red Tide.

We later found out that Red Tide is a bloom of a particular strain of algae. It sometimes comes when the weather is warm late in the year. Obviously, from the pictures, it causes the normally clear, emerald waters to turn murky with an ugly brown/green/purple color. What you don't get from these shots is that it also kills the fish, and causes folks on shore to cough and wheeze.

The red flags, which had just been removed the day before, were replaced with purple ones (Marine Pests Present). That meant no more swimming in the ocean - again. The girls were unhappy, to say the least.

I took the Nikon and snapped some shots of the Red Tide for documentation purposes (but these pics of Lorie's are more dramatic). I also took the opportunity to try to capture some of the interesting geometry and color combinations of the Destin West complex. Here are a few of those shots:



We all hopped in the minivan that afternoon and went into Destin Harbor to research dolphin cruises. We watched some of the fishing boats unload their catch. One charter passenger, whose cache of tuna and wahoo was emptied onto the dock, was hollering at the captain because the ship's dog (a terrier mutt of some sort) was busy chewing the tails off of all the freshly caught fish. The captain was nonchalant about the situation, shrugging his shoulders and explaining, "He just likes to eat the tails." What the heck - you're not going to eat the tails right? So let the dog have them.

The Destin Fishing Rodeo was in progress, and we ambled over to AJs to see the festivities. There was much drinking and celebration over the catches of the day.

Later we visited our favorite restaurant for dinner - McGuires. We had a long wait, but the weather was fantastic (ignoring the unseen cloud of goo that lay, festering, in the gulf just blocks away). We hung around outside, and the smell of the smokehouse (where they prepare the smoked prime rib) was maddening! We all ate too much and went home full and woozy.