One summer day on Florida’s west coast, my friends and I set out for a trip to Anna Maria Island, eager for the sun and surf. But as we neared the beach, a sharp, salty stench filled the air, so pungent that we rolled up the car windows in an attempt to block it out. When we finally arrived, the parking lot was deserted, and the visitor center stood shuttered. The summer heat pressed down on us, heavy and oppressive, but it was the smell—an acrid, suffocating odor—that truly unsettled me.
Stepping onto the beach, the source became clear: the shallow waters and the sand were littered with hundreds of dead fish, their bloated bodies bobbing and decomposing in the heat. The ocean itself was tinged a deep, ominous red. It was my first encounter with what locals call “red tide.”
One friend tried to shrug it off, noting the absence of tourists as a small blessing, and they started playing football among the decaying fish carcasses. But I couldn’t stop scrolling through news reports, desperate to understand what we were witnessing. Experts explained that these toxic algal blooms—specifically, the microscopic organism Karenia brevis—had long been part of Florida’s natural cycle, but that year, the bloom had exploded with unprecedented severity. The 2016 red tide, they said, was a once-in-a-lifetime disaster. At the time, I believed them.
Yet this ominous bloom was only one chapter in a longer story of my community’s ongoing struggle with nature’s wrath. I grew up surrounded by reminders of the environment’s unpredictable force. At 13, lightning struck and destroyed our home’s electrical system. By 16, tornadoes had ripped through our neighborhood, snapping trees and damaging houses. My family was fortunate to avoid the worst, but the toll on our community was real and constant.
Then came 2017 and Hurricane Irma. Hurricanes are almost routine in Florida, so when news of Irma emerged, I didn’t pay much attention. I assumed it would be like any other storm—a few missed school days and some inconvenience.
But as the storm approached, everything changed.
I made the decision to drive 130 miles home from college, wanting to be with my family before the worst hit. The highways were eerily empty heading southbound, while northbound traffic crawled in a gridlock. When I arrived, I found my family in full preparation mode—my mom frustrated on the phone over a delayed generator, my sister stacking cases of bottled water, and my dad securing everything in the yard, from garden gnomes to storage bins. Suddenly, I realized I’d seriously underestimated Irma.
The Weather Channel’s latest forecast revealed that the storm’s path had shifted. It was now predicted to strike just south of our home, a modest one-story stucco house about thirty minutes from the Gulf of Mexico. Nearly a decade earlier, our realtor had assured us the house could withstand a Category 4 hurricane. Now, meteorologists warned the storm’s diameter would span both coasts of Florida, and its intensity had jumped to Category 4—on the brink of the most devastating Category 5.
Silence fell over the house. The gravity of the situation was impossible to ignore. We had to evacuate.
We packed our essentials and headed north to my grandmother’s home. Though still within the storm’s path, being together gave us some comfort. That night, Irma hit with relentless fury. The wind howled like a living thing, keeping us awake as trees snapped and fell around us. The sky cracked with lightning, and power lines sparked dangerously as they fell. We huddled close, shielding our heads, praying the worst wouldn’t come crashing through the roof.
When dawn finally broke, an eerie quiet blanketed the neighborhood. The devastation was overwhelming: for every roof torn away, scores of trees lay uprooted; for each shattered window, countless bird nests were crushed. Nature’s force was indiscriminate and absolute.
Unlike the relatively obscure phenomenon of red tide, Hurricane Irma captured national attention. The phrase “man-made climate change” was repeated endlessly on the news. Suddenly, the storms, the heat, the destruction weren’t random acts of nature—they were part of a larger crisis caused by humanity itself. For the first time, I refused to believe this was a “once-in-a-lifetime” event.
Florida’s coastlines remain under siege from a worsening climate crisis. Tropical storms and hurricanes are not only becoming more frequent but more powerful. My own family has continued to suffer the consequences: just recently, Hurricane Ian forced my sister to evacuate her home in Fort Myers. And red tides, once occasional, now occur almost annually, poisoning the water and killing marine life along beaches like Anna Maria Island.
But Irma taught me something crucial: the bleak summers spent breathing in the rotten stench of red tide do not have to be our future. We are not helpless grains of sand endlessly battered by the ocean’s waves. Unlike the tides, which follow their own course, we possess the power to steer our destiny.
Collective action is our strongest weapon. By recognizing our role in climate change, by demanding sustainable policies, and by adapting how we live, we can begin to reverse the damage. We must rise together against the tide, not as passive victims but as determined stewards of the environment.
Our future is not preordained. It’s a course we can—and must—change.
