Red Tide in Tampa Bay

     If you've been to the beach this year in Florida, chances are you saw a plethora of deceased fish washed ashore and smelt the consequences of unregulated wastewater dumping. Red tide in Tampa Bay is caused by an abundance of the algae called Karenia Brevis. Red tide is the blooming of algae that absorbs all of the oxygen in the water and suffocates water-dwelling creatures such as fish, marine mammals, and crustaceans. Under natural circumstances, Brevis does not become so abundant that it causes massive fish kills. However, this is caused by human waste pollution such as fertilizers, wastewater, and industrial pollutants which allows for the algae to grow uncontrollably. However, it is important to note that we can limit the number of pollutants and minimize red tide algae blooms. Ultimately, these deaths are avoidable as they are caused by anthropogenic interference.

For our project, we created a visual representation of the devastating effects that red tide has had on Tampa Bay wildlife. To construct our art piece, we gathered photographs of dead fish in the area and cut the photos into shapes of sea creatures. To represent the anthropogenic roots of the red tide, we painted a mannequin hand red and dangled the cutouts from the fingers with red yarn and clear string. Then, for the background of our piece, we painted a beach with bloody streaks in the water and a warning sign for red tide. Then, on one of the cutouts, we painted a message saying “Red Tide Kills”. We wrote this because we wanted to emphasize our point in a dramatic and simple manner.


An issue we ran into was we were planning on displaying our art piece at the Saturday Morning Market but they couldn’t let us set up there. We were then planning on setting up a table at Eckerd but we waited too long. We didn’t finish the art piece as fast as we would have liked to and then the week before finals came up. Although we finished the art piece then, our schedules didn’t line up, we were overloaded with work, and everyone on campus was going through the same thing. So, we thought it was best to post our art piece and petition on social media and get signatures that way. About 78 people ended up signing the petition, so we didn’t reach our goal of 100 people, but we were close. Ultimately, time management was our biggest challenge but we are still satisfied with the results and we are really proud of the art piece that we created!


We incorporated a variety of course concepts into our projects, such as environmental art, agenda setting, the media engagement continuum, hypermediacy, and call to action. Environmental art is when environmental problems are communicated through art (Pezzulo & Cox, 2021). The reason we chose to explain the red tide through art is that we wanted an audience to be able to visualize the harm that it causes to sea creatures. As a result, we thought that we would be able to provoke feelings of empathy, pity, anger, fear, and distress in our audience and this would push them to take action and fight against the red tide, like signing a petition we found. Agenda setting is when one affects others' perception and relevance of an issue by communicating to the public (Pezzulo & Cox, 2021). As we communicate about the red tide to people it can affect, we are drawing attention to it in hopes that we can educate people on its causes and change/enhance their initial perception of it. Also, with us drawing attention to the issue by making an art piece and getting people to sign a petition, it makes our audience feel like it is a relevant and important thing to focus on. Next, the media engagement continuum explains a transition of an audience going from a passive experience to an active one (Pezzulo & Cox, 2021). In our project, this can be exemplified because our art piece’s purpose is to draw the audience in so they can have an active role in our issue and sign the red tide petition. Then, hypermediacy was exemplified in our project because we printed out photos that were originally shared online and transformed them into our hanging fish. Additionally, we chose to convert the fish photographs into physical cutouts of sea creatures to create a tense mood of morbidity and urgency. As stated earlier, with this appeal to one’s emotions, our goal was to cause an emotional reaction for our audience. With this in mind, we had a call to action in our project because we had hoped that an emotional art piece would drive people to sign our petition and to get upset over the effects of red tide (Pezzulo & Cox, 2021). Overall, our plan worked since we got almost 100 signatures! Finally, if anyone is reading this, we would love it if you could also sign our petition! I will leave the link here: https://www.change.org/p/kathleen-passidomo-fund-the-fixes-for-red-tide-in-southwest-florida-pbpoa


Pictures of our project!






                                              

                                                         References 

Fish kill report application. (n.d.). Retrieved December 14, 2021, from https://app.myfwc.com/FWRI/FishKillReport/SearchResults.aspx. 

Sign the petition. Change.org. (n.d.). Retrieved December 14, 2021, from https://www.change.org/p/kathleen-passidomo-fund-the-fixes-for-red-tide-in-southwest-florida-pbpoa. 

Environmental communication and the public sphere. by J Robert Cox; Phaedra Carmen Pezzullo. eBook : Document. English. 2021. Fifth edition.

Sampson, Z. T., & Weber, N. (2021, July 23). Red Tide's return raises fears about the health of Tampa Bay. Tampa Bay Times. Retrieved December 2, 2021, from https://www.tampabay.com/news/environment/2021/07/23/red-tides-return-raises-fears-about-the-health-of-tampa-bay/ 

Moritz-Rabson, D. (2018, August 20). A single county in Florida has collected 150 tons of fish killed by the Red Tide. Newsweek. Retrieved December 2, 2021, from https://www.newsweek.com/florida-red-tide-update-120-tons-dead-fish-1081665

Red Tide Fish Kills Plague St. Petersburg. Spectrum News. (n.d.). Retrieved December 3, 2021,  fromhttps://www.baynews9.com/fl/tampa/news/2021/07/08/red-tide-fish-kills-plague-st--petersburg- 

Red tide current status. Florida Fish And Wildlife Conservation Commission. (n.d.). Retrieved December 14, 2021, from https://myfwc.com/research/redtide/statewide/

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