Fish killed from a red tide event on Padres Island TX. photo by Barbara KeelerAs David Newstead and I started our week of fieldwork on Padre Island National Seashore, we were hoping for better conditions than the catastrophic fish kill that blanketed Texas beaches last fall. There to trap shorebirds, we mostly spent our time riding the 60 mile long undeveloped beach near Corpus Christi, TX, documenting one of the worse red tide events every to occur on the Gulf Coast. The deadly toxin from the algae bloom, killed fish and birds particularly red knots. At the beginning of our trip, last year we saw a few hundred red knots, by the end of our trip we…