SAN DIEGO — If you’ve been to the beach lately you may have noticed the waves look different.
The brownish-looking water is from a red tide that happens this time of year but lately it appears to be more dramatic.
“Foul. It just looks foul,” said Larry Phelps.
John Giadowski says he can’t see his surf board when he’s riding the waves.
“Chocolate milk, kind of, you know, little Nestle’s Nesquick,” he added.
Ashley Canchola hasn’t seen brownish water like this in the Venice Beach area where she is from.
“I feel as if that is not natural. And it looks orange and metallic, like rust,” said Canchola.
Natural phenomenon
But it is a natural phenomenon. The red tide wasn’t seen clearly at the Scripps Pier in La Jolla but the red tide was dramatic near the Crystal Pier in Pacific Beach.
“A red tide just really means there’s a lot of plankton in the water, and it’s causing our eyes to see this reddish color,” said Clarissa Anderson.
She is the director of the Southern California Coastal Ocean Observing System at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. She says robotic microscopes are capturing several images of plankton near the Scripps Pier throughout the day that often flourish during a red tide.
“It’s when the plankton in the ocean, these are the tiny, microscopic algae, that are really responsible for most of the oxygen we breathe on the planet and bloom,” said Anderson.
The scientists say the red tide red tide wasn’t as common in the spring into summer until 2019.
“It’s been an interesting phenomenon. We don’t know what it means. It might just mean that we’re having more of these warmer stratified conditions in the spring than we used to have,” said Anderson.
While the tide doesn’t look clean it is harmless to humans.
“Sometimes people describe it as dirty, but it’s not dirty. These are algae, just like the kelp you see at the ocean,” she said.
Anderson adds if someone has asthma or is sensitive to algae they should avoid getting in the water, but for most people it’s safe to get in.
“It’s a little scary. I thought it was pollution. But thank you,” said Canchola.
One thing that is off with this week’s red tide is that there is not the bioluminescence light show that people often associate with the red tide.
“Normally, when it’s this at night, you get that, that bioluminescence, but at this point, it’s already dying off, and it’s not even glowing at night,” said Anderson.
Researchers are checking the images of plankton in this week’s red tide and have not found the organism that causes the waves to glow in a red tide.
“It’s really one organism who’s incredibly good at creating bioluminescence, and it is one of the many that can form a red tide,” said Anderson.
The red tide may also be impacting sharks. She agrees with the Cal State Long Beach Shark Lab. They told CBS 8 since there was a prominent red tide in Del Mar where a shark bit a swimmer last week, the shark may have been caught in the dense plankton.
“If you’re a shark and you’re underneath that and you’re hunting, it may very well be that your vision is obscured. We know they don’t have great vision as it is, and that your vision is obscured as you’re coming up through the water column to hunt prey that you could mistake your prey and accidentally bite a human,” said Anderson.
The red tide has been spotted in patches along the San Diego County shores up into Orange County.
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