MANATEE COUNTY, Fla. — Manatee County has contracted an independent company to conduct red tide clean-up operations in the county's canals and smaller waterways. That work began early Monday morning and continued throughout the day.

According to the county, the best way to pull the fish from the water is to do it by hand. Workers stationed on three different boats used nets to get into the hard-to-reach areas.

They methodically fished out the dead caracasses with large nets and dumped them into a trash barrel. 

“It’s very manual, and it’s going to be time consuming,” said Alan Lai Hipp, Manatee County’s Environmental Program Manager. 

Trail of death

For the past five days, Bradenton resident Sarah Vanderbent has been watching masses of dead fish floating by her backyard, situated on Bowlees Creek by Sarasota Bay. 

“You just see this trail of death, pretty much,” Vanderbent said while looking out into the creek on Monday afternoon. 

Vanderbent says she’s seen thousands of fish, including large snook, and on Thursday afternoon even spotted a dead shark at the base of her dock. 

“The smell? You can’t come outside at all,” she explained. 

 

 

Lai Hipp says there’s no way to tell exactly how long this type of clean-up will continue, and in his 13 years working with the county, he’s never seen anything like it. 

“The contractors are doing their best, but there’s nothing that stops fish from blowing back into an area, even once they’ve been through it,” he said. 

Manatee County is expected to declare a local state of emergency during their scheduled county commission meeting. That declaration will come on the heels of the state of emergency that Gov. Rick Scott declared last week.