"We occasionally have one explode and paint the ceiling."

As Martine de Wit stepped into a large and brightly lit laboratory near Eckerd College at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, she saw she had a heavy workload waiting.

Eight dead manatees were stacked up like kindling, waiting to be cut up so de Wit and her crew of biologists could figure out what killed them.

Normally, the end of a long weekend might result in one or two manatee carcasses waiting in cold storage for de Wit, a 47-year-old veterinarian from the Netherlands whose accented English carries the same just-the-facts manner as Sgt. Joe Friday from "Dragnet."

But this is the Time of Red Tide in Florida. The toxic algae bloom has already been named as the killer or suspected killer of more than 100 manatees since the spring, and so the carcasses keep rolling in like waves at the seaside.

Read more at the Tampa Bay Times.