The seemingly endless reports of red tide floating in Sarasota’s water and the smells of dead fish finally seem to be gone. With hundreds of thousands of sea life specimens lost, and an entire ecosystem damaged, no one was too sure how a sport like fishing would recover.

Fishermen have come out in waves in the recent weeks to get back to doing what they do best, and the clean waters got everyone excited.

“A couple weeks back we finally went out fishing and were like, hey! We can breathe!” said Billy Sherry ‘21. “Then we realized pretty quickly that the fish are doing great, and they’re very active.”

Others have noticed too that the fish are oddly active after such a long period of devastation.

Some say it is almost as if the red tide never happened, citing the extremely active and good fishing in the recent weeks.

“If I would have left before the red tide and then came back after and went fishing, I would have never known it was here,” said Parker Smith ’21.

It is not just the fish that are on the fritz either. All other forms of sea life, from dolphins to turtles to sharks, are extremely active right now.

“Not only the fish but the sharks are just crazy right now, we’ve been out every weekend for the last three weeks and have caught multiple almost every week,” David Collica ’19 said.

It is not just the fishing that is great now, however the water and the beaches are as well.

“We can go out on the boat now regularly and cruise around, stop by the sand bar, and there’s no dead fish smell, and the waters clear and blue. It’s a lot nicer,” Cyle Suttmiller ‘20.

With the red tide gone consistently over the last several weeks, students are finally being able to enjoy Sarasota’s biggest features--the beautiful beaches and water ways.