Avoidance response is a well-known mechanism for escaping environmental stress. For organisms with reduced active movement, such as benthic microalgae, drifting could be a specifically selected mean of avoiding less favorable environments. To test this hypothesis, a system was developed to assess if hypo-saline stress triggers drift in the estuarine benthic diatom Cylindrotheca closterium. Concurrently, the effects of salinity on growth inhibition were also investigated in order to compare the sensitivity of this endpoint with the drift response, and to estimate the immediate population decline caused by both drift and population growth responses. It was verified that the salinity value that inhibited the algal population growth by 50% (IGS50) was 19, while the salinity value that triggered the drift response by 50% of the population (TDS50) was 15. These results indicate that drift is an identifiable response triggered to escape stressful environments. The combination of the two responses (population growth and drift) showed that population decline based exclusively on the inhibition of population growth may result in an underestimation of the risk, compared with the decline when drifting to avoid stress is also taken into account.