Relationships between blooms of Karenia brevis and hypoxia across the
West Florida Shelf
Abstract
Harmful algal blooms (HABs) caused by the dinoflagellate Karenia brevis
on the West Florida Shelf have become a nearly annual occurrence causing
widespread ecological and economic harm. Effects range from minor
respiratory irritation and localized fish kills to large-scale and
long-term events causing massive mortalities to marine organisms.
Reports of hypoxia on the shelf have been infrequent; however, there
have been some indications that some HABs have been associated with
localized hypoxia. We examined oceanographic data from 2004 to 2019
across the West Florida Shelf to determine the frequency of hypoxia and
to assess its association with known HABs. Hypoxia was present in 5 of
the 16 years examined and was always found shoreward of the 50-meter
bathymetry line. There were 2 clusters of recurrent hypoxia: midshelf
off the Big Bend coast and near the southwest Florida coast. We
identified 3 hypoxic events that were characterized by multiple
conductivity, temperature, and depth (CTD) casts and occurred
concurrently with extreme HABs in 2005, 2014, and 2018. These
HAB-hypoxia events occurred when K. brevis blooms initiated in early
summer months and persisted into the fall likely driven by increased
biological oxygen demand from decaying algal biomass and reduced water
column ventilation due to stratification. There were also four years,
2011, 2013, 2015, and 2017, with low dissolved oxygen located near the
shelf break that were likely associated with upwelling of deeper Gulf of
Mexico water onto the shelf. We had difficulty in assessing the
spatiotemporal extent of these events due to limited data availability
and potentially unobserved hypoxia due to the inconsistent difference
between the bottom of the CTD cast and the seafloor. While we cannot
unequivocally explain the association between extreme HABs and hypoxia
on the West Florida Shelf, there is sufficient evidence to suggest a
causal linkage between them.