Scientists report blue-green algae pouring out Lake Okeechobee toward St. Lucie River

What appears to be blue-green algae is pouring out of Lake Okeechobee and headed toward the St. Lucie River.

"I can see algae here on the east shore of the lake, and it's getting sucked through the dam," Mark Perry, executive director of the Florida Oceanographic Society in Stuart, said Monday afternoon from a perch on the Port Mayaca Lock and Dam, which connects the lake to the C-44 Canal flowing to the St. Lucie River about 26 miles away.

"Once it goes through, it gets mixed in with all the muddy, dirty water and you can't see it anymore," Perry said. "But it's heading our way, and it sure looks like blue-green algae."

More:NASA, Harbor Branch partner on SeaPRISM to track Lake Okeechobee algae blooms

Possible blue-green algae also could be seen Monday along the canal downstream of Port Mayaca, four days after the Army Corps of Engineers began discharging Lake O water toward the St. Lucie River to keep the lake from rising too fast.

"We don't know how much algae is going to come out of the lake and how far it will get," Perry said. "Maybe it will get all the way to the river; maybe it won't. But it's coming our way."

Testing the waters

To be sure the bright green scum coming out of the lake and down the canal is blue-green algae, and to see if it contains toxins, will require lab tests. 

A crew from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection was scheduled to take samples of the possible algae Monday afternoon, said Kalina Warren, who heads the agency's statewide water testing program.

The samples are to be sent overnight to a DEP lab in Tallahassee for testing. Results should be available Tuesday or Wednesday, Warren said. The results will be posted at floridadep.gov/dear/algal-bloom.

"Sure looks like blue-green algae to me," was a chorus repeated Monday by Perry and two other FOS scientists, research director Vincent Encomio and education director Zack Jud.

More:'Distinct possibility' St. Lucie River could get algae blooms

Deja vu

The scene brings back memories of the beginnings of the 2016 algae blooms, which started with a bloom in the lake that spread first to the C-44 Canal and then to the St. Lucie River estuary in and around Stuart with Lake O discharges.

More: Scientists agree Lake O discharges, no septics, caused algae bloom

The Army Corps began discharging Lake O water to the St. Lucie about 7 a.m. Friday. As of early Monday morning, about 1.9 billion gallons of water had been released from the lake. That water is added to the more than 19 billion gallons of local rainfall runoff pouring out of the canal and into the river before the discharges began.

More: Lake Okeechobee discharges begin

And even more water drained off farmland in western Martin and St. Lucie counties has poured into the river from the C-23 and C-24 canals.

Ed Lippisch, a private pilot from Sewall's Point, saw what appeared to be a bloom in the lake Saturday morning. While about 1,500 feet above the lake, Lippisch said he "just happened to look out and see a kind of green flash. It looked like long, loose strands of green, kind of like seaweed lines you see out in the ocean but bright green."

More:Dirty water? Fish anyway, our economy depends on it | Ed Killer

The six to eight strands covered about a square mile from 2 to 3 miles northwest of Port Mayaca, he said. "It looked like the wind was blowing them to the eastern shore of the lake," Lippisch said. 

Lippisch also saw the massive bloom that covered much of the lake in 2016, before the algae was sent to the St. Lucie River by discharges.

"This stuff Saturday wasn't nearly as dense as it was in 2016," Lippisch said. "And there was no green sheen on the water like before. So, overall, it wasn't as bad as 2016; but by later this week, if we keep getting long, sunny days, it could get a lot worse."

Report algae sightings

• Florida Department of Environmental Protection at 855-305-3903 or floridadep.gov/dear/algal-bloom
• Tyler Treadway, Treasure Coast Newspapers/TCPalm.com at 772-221-4219 or tyler.treadway@tcpalm.com.