Red tide in the Mexican Gulf Today, on CNN.com, I read a new about red tide and how it is affecting wildlife in the Mexican Gulf. If you don't know what's red tide, I am going to try to explain to you what is the cause that products this phenomenon and its problems. In the first place, we are going to talk about the origin of the red tide: The red tide is caused by some microscopical algae that spring up when the conditions of water are favourable, this occurs suddenly after climatological events such as storms and hurricanes. These situations raise nutrients from the deeper ocean that have been used by the algae. The combination of nutrients and warm temperatures makes grow the microscopical algae and, in during their biological cycle, they produce toxins that spread to the water. Eventually, the toxins can be harmful to fish and other animals, causing the death of thousands of these. In the second place, there are some economic and health consequences. If we take into consideration that fish couldn't be eaten by humans, fishers and industry can't continue carrying out their activities, then they lose money. But, just in the case that they don't care about red tide, the problem could be still biggest. There are many risks in eating contaminated fish and mussels by humans. In conclusion, the red tide is a very important matter with no solution that involves a huge part of society. For this reason is important to detect the situation before it becomes a large public health problem.