TAMPA, Fla. — The devastating impacts of red tide can be felt all over the Bay Area as hundreds of tons of dead sea life continue to be pulled from area waterways.

As crews work around the clock to clean up, community members are making their voices heard and demanding change.

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“Very hard to be outside when everything is dead and smelly and unhealthy air. Really sad,” said rally participant Laura Gill.

For Gill, her 6-month-old son Ridley, and her friend Brenna Boucher, Red Tide has ruined a lot.

“I live right near the water and it’s really sad — you can’t even walk outside your house without smelling dead fish everywhere. You can’t go swimming, you can’t even go for a walk without going ‘Oh my God,” Boucher said.

That’s why they have teamed up with more than a hundred other community members for a different walk Saturday morning.

“Today is about sharing our stories as a community, a rally to support the voiceless,” said Thomas Paterek as he spoke to a large crowd gathered at the St. Pete Pier.

People are demanding state leaders declare the current red tide crisis a state of emergency. 

They’re asking for short- and long-term protection of the region’s waterways.

As community members, business leaders and non-profit groups walked from the pier and down the waterfront, many shared their stories as the dead sea life floated below.

People like Captain Neill Holland have been working with the city to clean up.

He owns GoFishTampaBay and Ocean Aid 360.

“I’ve never seen anything like this before and we’ve been here for the freeze of 2010, the red tide of 2018, but the amount of biomass that we’re seeing on the surface of the water and the impacts that it’s having, this is the worst we’ve seen,” Holland said. 

With no clear end in sight, community members like Gill and Boucher hope this rally makes a difference.

“St. Pete’s a water-loving community, just gotta get the right people on it,” Gill said.