Florida Fish Are Mysteriously Dying After 'Spinning and Whirling,'
smithsonianmag.com
smithsonianmag.com
We have nerves also. <Insert Florida man joke here>. If they are interested in the origin, they should hire a marine biologist expert on fish pathology to study the problem before it travels up by the food chain.
As there are very different types of animals affected and fishes can travel; my guess would be that the cause is not biological [1]. Some of this fishes are strictly carnivore, other are mostly vegetarian so both falling ill at the same time by a parasite or a disease is unlikely (But I'm just speculating, serious research was made for that).
Do we know were the spent batteries of the spacial station landed?
[1] (viruses are often host specific. The viruses that affect a cat will not affect normally a cow. Sharks and Sea breams are much more isolated genetically that cats and cows are).
The mentally ill of other states -who are no fun, don’t do meth, and frankly have zero personality- like to make everything black and white.
There’s a boogyman! Oh no.
We are the boogyman. We have fun
What do you think red tide comes from? Do you think red tide season to be a natural phenomenon and not entirely man made?
This state may have cared about the environment in the past but that has changed drastically over the last 8 years.
The sugar industry has done an untold amount of environmental damage in FL.
It's been known that agriculture runoff worsens red tide. Red tide is something that would happen a couple times a century, now it happens yearly; this is absolutely due to the terrible environmental regulations in FL. These polluters have massive ties to the state legislature, which is why they are never punished:
https://phys.org/news/2018-09-red-tide-natural-scientists-co...
What about the private sugar companies draining and polluting the Everglades? Why are they never fined appropriate amounts for ruining an important part of Florida's ecosystem?
Or by environmental laws do you mean NIMBYs that just abuse the court system because someone saw a barred owl in a tree? I should know, my neighbor prevented an entire subdivision from being built in "their" backyard for 5 years.
This is a state that is now hijacked by a political class that cares more about national ambitions than helping their citizens. Do you honestly think the current Florida legislature would have passed something like Bright Futures in todays climate?
Florida use to heavily invest in education and environmentalism, even with republican governance, now it's just another national political campaign with politicians that care more about grander ambitions while rallying the national political party with identity politics?
edit: so readers will be aware of how bad Florida has become, this state has voted for high speed rail since 2000 and when the money was about to be granted and secured by Obama and Crist. Then shortly after Rick Scott was elected he rejected the project and government grants because his party wanted to give a lost to Obama.
Something the voters have wanted for over a decade, that was literally enshrined into the state constitution, and was torpedoed every instant because the party that didn't want it to happened wasn't happy with the democratic process.
This state is also big on scamming but that can deserve its own large, and separate, thread
You should probably go read some Carl Hiaasen novels from 40 years ago if you really think that this is a recent problem…and one related to republican state leadership (which was your apparent implication).
Why do you care so much for defending practices that literally poison the earth, people, animals, and ruin the economy for many working class Floridians?
https://phys.org/news/2018-09-red-tide-natural-scientists-co...
So do you want to try and (unsuccessfully) explain where exactly I did that in my comment? Or are you just one for throwing bombs and straw men out here and hoping something lands? If you are going to make an argument against big sugar, make it. Instead your comment was a weak DeSantis political crack. Fine, you don’t like him…neither do I, but he wasn’t responsible for algae blooms that have been happening for decades.
If you had actually understood my comment you would have realized that I was saying this was a multiple decade issue that is not just confined to the current political leadership. Both parties own the mess because in Florida both parties are deep in bed with big ag. Go read a Hiaasen book, they are fiction but can give you a helluva lot more insight into Florida, ag industry, the environment, and its relationship with our government. Of course only do that if it is truly your interest. If your interest in it only extends as far as you can use it to push your political sensibilities, kindly go pound sand, because you are actually useless to those of us who actually care about these things.
Maybe slightly worrying also is that it affects both bony fish and cartilaginous fish, which are indeed very different in that (to my understanding) bony fish are phylogenetically closer to humans than to cartilaginous fish.
Which doesn't mean humans are necessarily vulnerable to the same problem, but there's no indication we shouldn't be affected as well (although our brains are probably better equipped to deal with internal ear or balance problems in general).
So, it is still a mystery.
And while the most well known ones are species specific (e.g., whirling disease in salmonids), they're more studied because they impacted aquaculture species, but we know of a fair few that can also infect multiple species.
I'm wondering if there's been an environmental change in the water, like temperature or salinity or nutrient levels that has allowed parasites not previously found in the area to expand their range.
I wonder if there's been a change in the water (e.g., temperature or salinity) that's increased the range of parasites (or their annelid hosts) not normally found there? There are a _lot_ of myxozoan species, they fascinate me in that they're Cnidarians, so related to jellyfish and sea anemones, but went the tiny parasitic route instead. Life is amazing and terrifying in its capacity for finding every niche...
Not all of them are species specific, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enteromyxum_leei
In my experience FWC doesn’t play around but that doesn’t mean they are immune to pressure from the Governor.
However, I was in the Florida Bay backcountry last week fishing and there were some suspect smells for sure. Likely sewage from a boat.
https://myfwc.com/research/saltwater/health/spinningevent/#:....
What exactly are you talking about?
https://www.animals24-7.org/2024/04/16/nitrogen-kills-florid...
I'm wary of that site but it has me wondering what some of the biologists there would say.
Lebreton, L., van der Zwet, J., Damsteeg, JW. et al. River plastic emissions to the world’s oceans. Nat Commun 8, 15611 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms15611
This is exactly that strange and under no circumstances should be written of by natural cause.
That’s what we’re lacking here. That’s the point.
Remember, this is Florida, the place where they banned local laws requiring heat-protection measures for outdoor workers. Expect things to get worse, much much worse.
Should we mandate showers for government employees next?
Florida is Faustian independence.
Let me enjoy my meth in peace
Because smarter people have migrated to these states, they vote Blue, because the Red party these days is basically the party of anti-science, uneducated religious nuts. University graduates overwhelmingly vote Blue in the US. (Also, there's a high inverse correlation between education and religiosity.)
Keep in mind, it wasn't always this way: not that long ago, the Republican party was the party of fiscally-conservative pro-business and other upper-class people (and the Democratic party was the pro-labor and other generally lower-class party), so these states frequently swung Red. Not any more.
Florida has a lot of overregulation and tedious laws too, which I take as a grim reminder of how much "libertarian freedom" has eroded as an ideal (which, if it existed anywhere, it existed and exists most in America).
YOU most likely have lived a coddled life.
Roofing is hard but buddy everyone took precautions or quit (didn’t last the season). No manager forces dudes up on the roof, he knows it’s hot up there too. No one can force you up the ladder. If a boss got to demanding the crew would fistfight him or quit or refuse. If he was that bad his manager would fire him.
This is not a problem, working in the heat. Frankly - which I guess you wouldn’t clue into because you never worked roofing in Florida - I would bet the rule was meant to hamstring the Mexican crews so more white crews could get their work. The Mexican teams have more people (they pay less, and work faster - they switch off more often). Enact this rule and NOW you can send someone to the job site to harass and even arrest the Mexican teams who are usually not all legal. So you get to deport a Mexican roofer who if we deport any illegal, these are the most hardworking guys.
But nope everyone reads this as a ‘working conditions’ thing when it’s really a ‘let slower, higher charging white crews get more work’ because politics breaks everyones brains. And second order effects elude the majority
Gymnastics to keep letting highly coercible people do dangerous jobs.
Getting on a roof is dangerous but so is sitting at a keyboard for 8hrs a day. I fully, for revenge, support regulation that unless you get up every 30 mins from your posh coding job and take a 15 min break your employer is fined.
That’s a great law right?I get to tell you what to do because I’m benevolent and not short sighted, because me and my viewpoint is never evil.
I’m clearly being good and nice!
Btw if you go to the gym, you’ll feel sore. So I deeply suggest don’t go to the gym! Avoid the pain, I’m a nice guy I vote a certain way and think only good thoughts I’m worried about you and I don’t want you working in a gym (gyms are dangerous, people have been hurt there).
I’ll use rhetoric that makes me deftly defendable because we’re talking past each other.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jul/21/us-worker-wo...
The rate of injury in roofers is 3.6 per 100 full time-equivalent employees. The rate of injury in software engineers is about 0.05.
Are you actually even trying to talk or, again, just putting on a gymnastics show for us?
The clean guys were christian or the overseer/managers. So imagine a team that high/buzzed out working a very hot physical job, up and down a ladder, things going over your head… people make a lot of mistakes.
It is not heat! We’d already slow down noon (take a long lunch break) and did not pick up fast until 2:30 or 3:30 depending on cloud cover.
You can McKinsey me with statistics but I’m trying to very explicitly say it’s not the heat. It’s everyone on the crew being wasted and hungover on the jobsite. I had a guy throw a roll of flashing clear off the roof into me. People fell going up the roof. You could have these guys working in the shade, having 2 shots and a monster in you is gonna still gonna cause problems.
Software engineers are not drunk or hungover and doing something physical or else there would be a higher injury rate for them. If you stick a pointless law of roofers need heat protection, it’s only effects the Mexicans and takes their work. If you want that then fine by all means.
Come to Florida and go to a roofing job. Nail guns are quieter during the hottest part of the day.
The Mexican teams work through the heat and faster this way :
1. More of them. 20-15 vs 7.
2. They pay each guy less because some are illegal so they can afford more guys
3. They switch off more often. If you have 7 guys you can’t switch often. 15 you can stand in the shade more often, recover faster.
4. They don’t drink as much! I worked 2 weeks on a Mexican team and everyone was sober. Some of the younger kids looked a little hungover a few days but it was night and day difference. The jobs went much quicker and if there was no language barrier I would greatly prefer that team.
If the Mexican teams disappear roof prices go up. I don’t think it improves the substance abuse of the white teams. Everyone else can charge a little more.
My main point is the idyllic work environment you are hoping to enshrine with law is really a wage protection law against illegal roofers and doesn’t help the substance abuse.
The Mexicans are not loaded, carrying shingles up a roof while all the white guys are hungover getting outworked and realize they are losing bids. Rather than lay off drugs or lower pay so the crew can enlarge they smartly sponsor a bill to allow them to continue substance abuse while scaring the Mexican teams out.
Do you deserve a cheaper roof or do white drunk crews deserve more money? I side with the Mexican crews because they make even less, live in the US and don’t use so many substances.
I got hurt 6 times, once was my fault - the rest was my coworkers!
How much can the California mind blame the heat? Yeah, I drank a 12 pack last night and I was slightly buzzed when I fell off the ladder. So let me blame climate change. Study finds heat decreases emotional control (published by a researcher from California): I hit my kids because the temp went up and I got mad.
Florida is known to be crazy and it’s actually pretty nice.
California seems like a state of permanent and ever evolving victimhood but is it actually pretty nice?
Brilliant
> Should we mandate showers for government employees next?
I see zero relevance between your comment and the issue of ensuring minimal safety for human beings. Regulations on heat protection for workers is so they literally do not die. Your demonstration of shockingly low empathy for other people is disgraceful and has no place in modern society.
The biggest benefit would be drug addiction counseling for them.
The real point of the law was to hurt the Mexican crews. The Hispanic crews are weary of getting reported and deported for anything, they work faster, cheaper, and underbid the white crews. So enact the law, and the larger Spanish crews suddenly have a reason to be examined. The Spanish/Mexican crews have larger teams and pay everyone less so they rotate the guys more. Add a law of mandatory breaks plus an inspector and finally the white crews can keep up!
This noble law was smartly planned a phrased to appeal to your do good sensibilities but would hurt imo the hardest working illegals I’ve ever met.
Step 1) Maintain laws mandating shade/heat protections for workers
Step 2) Maintain sensible work visa and immigration policies so nobody has to harass people who are working.
I know the second isn't a simple fix, but dismantling worker protections to solve political gamesmanship is not the solution.
The white crews and Mexican crews are doing fine last I heard around mid 2023. Great money. The heat is not a problem. The ‘heat’ was an attempt to mess with the Mexican crews. I get that it’s bad many are illegal but most of the Americans who worked on a crew couldn’t handle the job and quit or drank, not because of the heat but from sleeping in, drinking, the pain from job, and the large amount of money they made and then made poor choices with. It’s a physically demanding job. The heat doesn’t matter, none of the guys stayed up top longer than 30 mins in full sun already because you sweat so much you can’t hold the nail gun well
How about we make a rule that you are simply not allowed to poison anything? Why? Because poison is.. the name says it all.. poison!
Ever heard the phrase "the dose makes the poison"? Table salt and milk have both been used as pesticides.