Red Tide (eBook)

Chapter 1

The Sediment Stone

The afternoon sun sparkled as it reflected off the crystal-clear water of the Coral Sea. Each ray of light separated and refracted as it passed through the waves, casting endless bands of color that bathed the shapeless coral of the reef in a show of brilliance that changed as each wave passed above. With each wave the light merged with the intricate formations of coral and the schools of brightly colored fish, creating a never-ending light show that mesmerized the diver and held her in awe of the reef’s beauty. Whether she was diving or simply snorkeling over the reef, Myah couldn’t think of a more perfect place.

At 27, Myah was spending so much time in the water her friends began telling her she was going to turn into one of the fishes she was always studying. When she was awarded a grant from NASA to work on the Great Barrier Reef, she couldn’t believe she was going to be paid to do the work she loved. She had packed up everything she owned and happily moved away from the smog choked air of Los Angeles where she grew up and moved to Australia where the air was as clear and as clean as the ocean that surrounded it. She had earned a graduate degree in Marine Biology during her first year working on the reef. Diving on the reef to catalog the schools of multi-colored fish had been her dream job.

Myah’s research had even given her the chance to identify a previously unknown species of fish. “Myah’s Goby.” She liked the sound of that. Only ten months before, which seemed like a lifetime now, she had been diving on the reef mentally cataloguing the various fish she encountered… which wasn’t easy, because there were hundreds of fish living in that coral head. At first, she wasn’t sure she had even seen the little fish and thought it was just the constantly shifting colors of the reef that had given it a unique coloring. She had been swimming for hours and her eyes were getting tired. She thought she had seen a flash of red and blue along the side of the small fish and that had been enough to catch her attention. At first, she thought she must have seen it wrong. The fish looked like a typical Goby, but she had never seen one with that coloring. She waited, as still as the water would allow, for almost twenty minutes before the previously unidentified Goby reappeared. Spotting the little fish was not the kind of thing that would get many people excited, but Myah could feel her adrenaline rise as she nervously took pictures of the little fish. When she was able to study the pictures to confirm what she had seen, she knew she had discovered a new species of fish, but it took her another month of diving and research to prove it.

The inch-long Goby is very prolific and there are hundreds of Goby subspecies already known, but this variety had somehow gone unnoticed. She was the first to identify this variant of Goby.

Her Goby had been given a fancy Latin name.

Family: Gobiidae,

Latin name: Pomatoschistus microps Brisbane,

Common Name: Great Barrier Red Striped “Myah’s Goby.”

She liked to tell people the name translated simply to “Myah’s Goby.” Well anyhow, that was something they couldn’t take away from her. She told the few friends she had time for, that she had “a stupid little fish named after her” but deep inside she really did think having a fish named after her was “kind of a cool thing.”

Myah loved studying the marine life on the reef, but her grant included another job she wished she didn’t have to do. Along with cataloging new forms of marine life, her assignment also included identifying how well the reef was recovering from the damage it suffered during the climate change cycle that occurred early in the Century. It had been thirty years since the warming cycle peaked and the slow recovery from it was still impacting the marine life on the reef. In a climate warming cycle, the primary impact to humans comes from coastal flooding as the sea levels rise. Climate change had been a hot political issue at the time but once the politics were separated from the science, people realized the flooding occurred slowly and was manageable. Myah despised how politicians manipulated science for their own benefit.

The sea life that depended on the reef had been impacted… but, other than some minor press reports that accomplished little, the damage to the reef had largely been ignored by the politicians. Myah had no problem finding evidence of climate change. She could see it in the bleached-out sections of coral. As the seas rose, they became more acidic and the increased Ph levels killed the fragile micro-organisms that give the coral its color and had the effect of bleaching the coral as the organisms died. The loss of the micro-organisms in the coral had a devastating effect on the other marine life higher in the food chain that depended on the micro-organisms for food. The high acidity also caused the shells of some sea life to be thinner, taking away their natural protection. Myah tended to look at anything that lived in the sea as her personal pet. Observing the resilience of the life now returning to the reef was a great cause for hope and helped Myah understand the importance of her work.

No one knew for sure how long this climate cycle might last but evidence suggested the seas were already beginning to stabilize, indicating this cycle was already beginning to reverse. What people hadn’t understood was the resilience of the Earth, and while scientists acknowledged there had been a warming cycle, it was clear that many of the predictions regarding the impact of the cycle were politically motivated and had been wrong. The people who denied climate change were also wrong because a global warming cycle had in fact occurred and even if not apocalyptic, damage to the Earths ecosystems had taken a heavy toll on the planet. The political motivations on both sides of the argument had diverted people’s attention from the real ecologic issues, such as the carcinogens being pumped into the oceans and the atmosphere. Most scientists now admitted there was no theory on which they could base their climate change cycle predictions or determine how severe a cycle might be. Scientists didn’t know enough about climate cycles at the time, and politicians didn’t really care. Myah hoped the evidence she was gathering would help to change that. Some of the data she was gathering included evidence of past climate cycles and how they had impacted the reef over thousands of years. In the meantime, the Earth was beginning to cool.

The opportunity to live in Australia made everything about Myah’s life diving on the reef seem perfect. But her time working on the reef had ended abruptly. She loved living in Australia and was starting to think of it as home when she was suddenly reassigned, and her life was forever turned upside down. Could it really have been just a week since she had packed all her belongings and moved away from the reef? That move had been the most painful experience of her life.

Most days Myah loved being in the water and couldn’t wait to get to work, if that’s what you wanted to call what she did… but today wasn’t one of those days. She was no longer working on the reef. She had been reassigned to “this place” and she had no recourse or ability to refuse her new assignment. “This place” was Port Canaveral Florida. What she was doing here was not what she had in mind when she followed her passion for science into marine biology. Today, instead of diving on the Great Barrier Reef, she was snorkeling in this “mud hole of a wetland shallows” as she had started referring to it. And now she was studying… nothing. “This place” was a back bay located on the Banana River that separated the barrier islands from the mainland along the east coast of Florida. The river was suffering from the ravages of years of a persistent red tide that had left it completely barren. All the marine life that once thrived here was long dead and it wasn’t clear why her NASA sponsor had reassigned her to a research project in this place. The water of the river was foul, and the decay gave it a terrible smell. Myah was speaking to herself as she swam.

“I’m not going to identify any new species of fish in this place. That’s certain. Not in this mud hole.”

The river was another example of politics and science getting off track. It took years for scientists to realize, or at least to admit, the events that had brought the river to its current condition. The Banana River wasn’t alone. It faced the same fate as many of the smaller tributaries and wetlands along Florida’s coast where the chemical runoff from large agricultural farms had leached into the bays behind the barrier islands eventually killing them. Myah blamed the condition of the wetlands on decades of political mismanagement. And the destruction of these wetlands wasn’t limited to the pollution from agriculture and farms. What had once attracted millions of migrants from the north to the beautiful Florida coast… well landscaped homes, green golf courses and people who depleted the regions natural aquifers, had all done their share to transform Florida’s wetlands into ecological wastelands. Those tourists who played on chemically treated golf courses and the families who used phosphate fertilizers on their lawns had also done their part to destroy the environment they had once...