Word: gymnodinium
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...Gulf Coast of Florida from St. Petersburg to the Marco Island area was visited by a "red tide," a massive bloom of microorganisms (Gymnodinium brevis). They stained the sea water rusty brown and killed thousands of fish, which then washed up on the beaches to rot. Workers cleaning the beaches around St. Petersburg could hardly keep up with the harvest of dead fish putrefying in the summer sun. It was the worst occurrence since an eleven-month siege in 1946-47 destroyed an estimated 100 million pounds of fish...
...knew for certain what had caused the phenomenon. Dr. F. G. Walton Smith, director of the University of Miami's Marine Laboratory, was sure it was a sudden multiplication of a new species of tiny, one-celled organisms called gymnodinium. He had found as many as 60 million of them in a quart of "red" water. The fish were killed either by a poison secreted by these organisms or as a result of their death and decay, he thought. Their sudden appearance might be explained by an increase in the phosphate content of Gulf water from phosphate plants near...
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