Green water concerns neighbors in Cape Coral community

The saying goes that the grass is always greener, but in Cape Coral, the water somehow finds a way to make that untrue.

Cape Coral resident John Lovenduski worries about the green algae he sees in his backyard canal.

“Comes in blooms and then develops a sheet on the water,” Lovenduski said.

Lovenduski told WINK News reporter Liz Biro that it’s just that time of year.

The bloom in his backyard canal off the Bimini Basin has been brewing for about a week but looked its worst on Thursday morning.

“I get worried if it’s anything toxic develops, if it smells,” said Lovenduski.

But with no health alert or recognition of the bloom on the Department of Environmental Protection’s algal bloom dashboard, WINK News took a sample to Barry Rosen’s lab at Florida Gulf Coast University to get John an answer.

“There’s a lot of stuff swimming around in here oh my goodness,” said Rosen, a professor in the Water School at FGCU.

The sample was examined under three separate microscopes.

“Not a lot of people can identify oddball organisms …and this is an oddball,” said Rosen.

Dr. Rosen knows it’s blue-green algae and it has the potential to produce toxins. But it may not be that oddball.

“So it’s either the Dolichospermum, which is very common, or it can be Sphaerospermopsis,” said Rosen.

Both types have the potential to produce toxins.

Sphaerospermopsis is rare in the United States. Rosen has only seen it in southwest Florida twice before.

One of those times was a sample WINK News reporter Liz Biro brought him last year from the same canal.

Bottom line: Keep out of this water.

“Keep your pets out of the water. Your pet will go in the water and it’ll get on their fur, they’ll lick their fur, they’ll get a much higher dose,” said Rosen.

Professor Rosen has that sample and is going to watch it for a few days, in the meantime, his lab is running tests for toxins.