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Florida Fish Are Mysteriously Dying After 'Spinning and Whirling,'
by rbanffy
There is not a mystery here; something has damaged the nervous system of this animals. Either a virus, a toxic or a brain/ear blunt trauma caused by an explosion or a strong sonar.
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).
> As there are very different types of animals affected and fishes can travel
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).
Florida man would never vote in anyone who would spend tax money on frivolous things like a marine biologist
If the title was "Florida man dies mysteriously after spinning and whirling" it wold have made barely a blip on the internet radar, even less on HN.
Florida spends a ton on environmental projects. Significantly more compared to other “blue” states.
Citatiom needed.
Floridians take their environment pretty seriously. Do you have any familiarity with this state whatsoever?
Are you familiar with this state? Farmers literally dump agriculture runoff into the water ways with zero repercussions.
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.
I'm a lifelong Florida democrat. Please don't assume I'm making stuff up just because you disagree with me.
What is your point to your comment? Florida is absolutely not the same Florida as it was in 90s or early 2000s. The state has drastically changed for the worse. I lived there for 30 years, I'm intimately involved with the local political scene. My neighbors were game wardens and licensed arborists.
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
> This state may have cared about the environment in the past but that has changed drastically over the last 8 years.
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).
It has been known for decades that agriculture runoff increases the intensity and duration of red tide.
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...
> 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?
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.
I'm assuming the blue utopia of California doesn't have agricultural pressures either then?
Nice whataboutism but as someone who lived in Florida for 30 years, still has familiar, and visits every year I think I'm familiar with the area I grew up in, started businesses in, and ultimately left.
DeSantis for all his warts and crooked nose is actually pro-environment. He’s done some good for the Everglades and Florida ecosystems.
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
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There's a diverse group of marine parasites, the myxozoans, that infect fish just by touching their gills or skin, so dietary preference alone wouldn't exclude them. Creepy little jellyfish cousins that evolved into parasites.
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.
> There is not a mystery here > Either a virus, a toxic or a brain/ear blunt trauma caused by an explosion or a strong sonar.
So, it is still a mystery.
It sounds like whirling disease[0] in salmonids.
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
Not much of a mystery. The locals have poisoned the water, third world style, and are avoiding testing the water because "mystery" sounds nicer than "we killed the fish".
My sources say FWC and NOAA fisheries have tested the water 165 times since last fall and sent 52 fish to a university in South Alabama for testing.
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/#:....
We had similar thing in our country and it was PCBs
Printed circuit boards?
Polychlorinated Biphenyls [1].
Horray for industry deregulation..
> their production was banned for most uses by United States federal law on January 1, 1978, under Title 15 U.S.Code 2605(e)
What exactly are you talking about?
PCBs are still ever present because they were banned but not removed from use. The result is over the decades since the ban, there were spills and other contamination.
Removing "flame-retardants, plasticizers, paints, caulking compounds, sealants" from buildings seems overreach, you'd probably have to raze them. They didn't even do that for asbestos or lead paint.
Yea but it wasn't just in buildings. They were for example, part of coolants used in transformers. When those fail they leak and contaminate.
Sure, but the same argument applies.
I wonder if someone more knowledgeable than me about this could say something about nitrogen concentration in the water:
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.
Very unlikely. Ammonia poisoning can kill fishes in a closed small aquarium, but this fishes are coastal and marine and very mobile. In the ocean we would need an awful lot of ammonia for the same symptoms. And we would have a very noticeable bloom first in the water joined with tons of stranded dead fishes.
This is definitely not on my Bingo card for 2024. I hope this will stay a fish problem.
Who doesn't have "We continue to fuck up the oceans" on their 2024 Bingo card?
"We" in the case of plastic:
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
Occasionally something will break an animal's brain and it will act oddly. Ants have something called an ant mill, where a platoon of army ants will begin to follow their own pheromone tracks, marching in a never ending loop until they die of exhaustion.
These are not ants but many different species of animals are dying in a very strange manner. Please try to not think them all of just "fish" as this is kind of an understatement. For better understanding think about that in a forest every animal from the bat and squirrel to boar and wolf starts spinning then die.
This is exactly that strange and under no circumstances should be written of by natural cause.
Sheep can get in a similar loop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifbNL0t31Tw
Humans must have similar things. I remember attending a soccer game, rather ambivalent about it since I wasn't a fan. However when our team scored, and the crowd erupted into celebration, I suddenly found myself standing up and roaring along with everyone else. It was like I had been hijacked. It felt great, definitely, but it was also unsettling.
Note how you have a perfectly sensible and not very alarming explanation of an ant mill?
That’s what we’re lacking here. That’s the point.
Are such behaviors limited to specific geographic regions?
lovely how they aren't testing for pesticides - yet
Why would they?
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.
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If it’s hot, go under some shade. Why should there be a law.
Should we mandate showers for government employees next?
Yes, all of those roofers should just work under all of the shade up there.
> 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.
I roofed in FL for an entire summer. The guys aren’t dumb.
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.
I know this may sound crazy to you but stick with me.
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.
You want me to solve immigration?
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
I see we have a Florida voter here.
Each state is an experiment. The results we all watch with interest.
Florida is Faustian independence.
Let me enjoy my meth in peace
Would be okay, if it wasn't required to be subsidized by california via the state- and the result of the failed experiments be parked at other peoples doorsteps (as greyhound homeless or superfund sites) all the time.
In what way is California subsidizing Florida? These are two of the richest states in the country, mind you.
They are referring to how California residents contribute more in federal tax dollars than they get back, making it a donor state. Florida gets more federal dollars than the residents contribute, which did surprise me, but it appears to be the case. However, it is not necessarily California residents subsidizing Florida. The residents of New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts all contribute a significantly greater positive balance in federal taxes than do residents of California.
There’s a lot of Social Security money flowing to all those retirees.
All the red states (except Texas) are a Federal drain generally, not just Florida.
The top donor states do vote blue, but I'm not certain this is a causal factor in the strength of their economy. The consistent donor states of Texas, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and California have all had strong economies for the last century regardless of who has been in power.
Those donor states, except Texas, have strong economies because they're basically where smart people are concentrated: those states all have premier universities, and various industries (like tech in CA, pharma in NJ, finance in NY, etc.) that depend on highly-educated "knowledge workers". Texas is rich because of natural resources (energy) mainly.
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.
I'm well aware of the current correlation of voting patterns to educational attainment and it certainly plays into this dynamic.
Florida offers a compelling argument for interstate conservatorship.
Hardly.
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've lived a life of privilege.
I roofed for a summer in FL. You wear long sleeves and a hat. You switch off every 30 mins from 11:30 to 3:30.
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
It’s interesting how in your other comment you’re saying “whoa whoa won’t anyone think of the illegals who are working hard to avoid deportation” and then here, “no one can force you up the ladder.”
Gymnastics to keep letting highly coercible people do dangerous jobs.
the Mexican teams are going up the ladders on their own. They are more like families frankly. The white teams are full of guys who quit all the time or don’t show up.
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.
Why don't you use statistics and facts instead of very bizarre snarky rhetoric?
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?
I worked the job. I was on a white crew mostly and more than half of the guys I worked with drank on the job or came in hungover. A lot were on oxy and nearly everyone smoked cigarettes or did dip. Some were high (very few) but you can’t really function high, those types self selected out.
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!
You didn’t click the link, did you?
I did. I felt it was a weaker argument for you.
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?
Okay got it, so your competing theory is that when it's hot out, people drink more 12 packs the night before, show up to work buzzed, and fall off ladders.
Brilliant
Florida's usual solution for undesirable thing X is to reduce testing for X.
that's a strategy :D thanks for the info
Didn’t read it yet. I bet it’s caused by pesticides. Just like things like Parkinson (which in France is now an official professional disease for amongst others wine farmers).
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!
I agree with you in theory, but I think you'll run into difficulties putting it into practice.
Ever heard the phrase "the dose makes the poison"? Table salt and milk have both been used as pesticides.
Yeah I know. I suggest that if somebody decides they do want to poison something, they first have to drink a full glass of it themselves.
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