This time of year, endangered smalltooth sawfish are usually giving birth to their young in the waters at Florida’s southern tip. But this spring, people are watching, horrified, as dozens of sawfish thrash helplessly in circles before they die.

Marine experts are baffled, and they’ve raced to South Florida to try to pinpoint the cause and rescue ailing fish. They have tested the water and samples from dead fish and ruled out water temperature, red tide and other variables. Experts interviewed by the Tampa Bay Times and other media outlets say current evidence points to a type of toxic algae.

And it’s not just sawfish, which are a species of ray with unusually long, toothy snouts. People fishing and boating around the Florida Keys, southwest Florida and Everglades National Park’s coastal areas have reported over 50 different marine species acting erratically and then dying, including sharks, Goliath grouper, snook, snapper, sting rays, stone crabs and pinfish.

We are witnessing another wakeup call about Florida’s poor water quality. On South Florida’s reefs, corals are bleaching and dying from disease. Hundreds of manatees starved to death in 2021 when algae outbreaks — fueled by fertilizer, sewage and agricultural waste — shaded out the seagrass they eat.

Year after year, we hear the ridiculous arguments from polluter-friendly politicians that Floridians are somehow standing in the way of progress by asking for commonsense environmental protections. We hear false assumptions about why we don’t need to properly conserve wetlands and mangroves; and most of all, that it would be too harsh to set more effective limits on the agricultural waste, sewage and fertilizer that are fouling our public waters, spewing dead fish on our beaches and chasing away swimmers.

When the unprecedented 2021 manatee die-off happened, Earthjustice filed suit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on behalf of the Center for Biological Diversity, Save the Manatee Club and Defenders of Wildlife. Our lawsuit, which focuses on Florida’s water quality standards, is ongoing.

The background: Years ago, when EPA approved Florida’s water quality standards, federal wildlife agencies had to assert, under the law, that the state’s measures would protect wildlife listed under the Endangered Species Act. But the hundreds of dead manatees in the Indian River Lagoon are proof that Florida’s water quality standards aren’t working. The lawsuit asks the court to require EPA to reinitiate consultation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service to reassess its approval of Florida’s water quality standards for the Indian River Lagoon.

It is critical to remember that the United States has laws to protect clean water and the species that depend on those waters. The smalltooth sawfish, in fact, was the first marine animal to be added to the Endangered Species Act list in 2003. Southern Florida is their last stand; they used to roam as far north as North Carolina and Texas, and south to Brazil.

Our leaders need to take these wildlife warnings seriously, set effective pollution limits, and do more than just pose for photo shoots in front of sparkling waves to prove they will protect our public waters.

Alisa Coe is deputy managing attorney in the Florida Office of Earthjustice.