A red tide is heading for thousands of acres of oyster beds in New Jersey's Delaware Bay.
But unlike the harmful algae blooms of the same name, this red tide is likely to bring good news for the shellfish: It's a dye designed to check if pollution levels have decreased enough to reopen the oyster beds for harvesting and human consumption.
Over the last few days, New Jersey and federal environmental officials dumped red dye into a creek that empties into the northern Delaware Bay. The creek is a known source of bacterial pollution from numerous sources, including birds and animals, and the idea was to see if the water is now clean enough to reopen thousands of acres of nearby oyster beds that have been off-limits for years due to contamination.
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