Jul 27, 2021 - News

One way to visualize Tampa Bay's 1,624 tons of dead fish

Chart: Will Chase/Axios
Chart: Will Chase/Axios

We are now at 1,624 tons of dead fish that have been pulled from the waters surrounding Pinellas County.

  • It’s hard to think about how big that is, but we tried out best to show you with a little local flair.
  • Pile 'em all up and they'd go a decent way up the Beer Can Building in downtown Tampa. (We'll leave you to imagine the smell.)

Some scale: The heaviest blue whale on record weighed 200 tons. This is more than eight times that.

According to themeasureofthings.com, that's also ...

  • 🗽 11 times as heavy as the Statue of Liberty (without its base).
  • 🦖 250 Tyrannosaurus rexes.
  • 🚗 About 900 cars.
  • 🚀 21 Space Shuttles.

Now that you’ve got a grip on all that dead fish, here’s some better news: Pinellas County spokesman Tony Fabrizio told Axios things are moving in the right direction from our ongoing red tide threat.

  • "We’re encouraged. It looked a lot better over the last two days. But the Gulf temperature is really high — 88 degrees. We’re hopeful at this point."
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