“Director’s Note” from Sarasota Bay Estuary Program Director Dave Tomasko:

Earlier today, I received a letter from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection's (FDEP’s) South District Office, that included a permit (FLOA00062) that was issued under Chapter 403, Florida Statutes. Representatives of Alarivean, Inc. in Scottsdale, Arizona, applied for this permit, with technical (but not financial) support from the SBEP.

The permit is for a project that we have referred to as the Magic Jet Ski - Director's Note: Red tide mitigation - potential involvement in field trial (sarasotabay.org). While the name is something we embrace as being self-deprecating, the science and engineering behind the proposed activity is solid and promising. The permit allows for the testing of a “…mobile system that injects nano oxygen and ozone bubble generation vessels into the water to…destroy harmful algal blooms…”

The permit will allow for the SBEP to work with the folks at Alarivean, Inc. to test a system that is intended to combine the science behind the mitigation of red tides with an engineering approach that could – hopefully – provide a benefit that is relevant at management scales. The background behind this approach goes back almost 50 years, when researchers from the National Marine Fisheries Service Laboratory in Milford Connecticut used ozone to treat seawater during a red tide in Tampa Bay (Blogoslowski et al. 1975). At that time, the red tide organism we now call Karenia brevis was called Gymnodinium breve. Extracts of the red tide toxin were derived from water samples from Tampa Bay during an ongoing red tide event with cell counts of around 275,000/L. Extracts for the control were made from the water, and then injected into laboratory mice, all of which died within 3 ½ minutes. In contrast, when water samples with the red tide organism were treated with ozone, and the extract was then injected into laboratory mice, all the mice lived.