ST. PETERSBURG, Fla., July 12 (UPI) -- Hurricane Dennis swamped Florida's Tampa Bay with dead fish but may have also destroyed the toxic algae bloom known as Red Tide that killed the marine life.
Dead fish piled up from Shore Acres to Tampa, Fla., in the wake of Sunday's hurricane, sparking numerous calls to state and local officials.
Neither the Red Tide nor the dead fish posed a serious threat, health officials said Monday.
"Red Tide cells tend to break up in turbulence," a spokesman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute told the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times. "Just smashing over a seawall or the turbulence that we had could kill it."
The spokesman said officials should know in a few days if the storm killed the three-week bloom of the algae that can be toxic to fish and cause respiratory irritation in humans.
As for the smelly dead marine life, a St. Petersburg sanitation official said, "We don't pick up dead fish. People can put the dead fish in their containers."
