Thread: Toxic algae blooming in warm water from California to Alaska

Toxic algae blooming in warm water from California to Alaska


In-Depth-U.S. News & World Report-Aug 4, 2015

Toxic algae blooms in a warmer Pacific, endangering marine life and forcing seafood bans




In this undated handout microscopy photo provided by NOAA Fisheries, the algae pseudo-nitzchia, which produces the toxic domoic acid, is seen from an algae bloom sample that the NOAA ship Bell M. Shimada collected during its survey this summer on the West Coast. One of the largest toxic algae blooms recorded off the West Coast is much denser, more widespread and may go extend deeper than initially thought, say scientists who surveyed the event aboard a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research vessel. (NOAA Fisheries via AP)


Associated Press Aug. 4, 2015 | 5:51 p.m. EDT

By PHUONG LE, Associated Press

SEATTLE (AP) — One of the largest toxic algae blooms recorded off the West Coast is denser, more widespread and deeper than scientists feared even weeks ago.

Researchers sponsored by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are sampling the Pacific Ocean.

They say this algae bloom is flourishing amid unusually warm Pacific Ocean temperatures, and now stretches from at least California to Alaska.

This bloom, as much as 40 miles wide, has severe consequences for the Pacific seafood industry, coastal tourism and marine ecosystems.

Shellfish managers on Tuesday doubled the area off Washington's coast that is closed to recreational and commercial Dungeness crab fishing, after finding elevated levels of marine toxins in tested crab meat.

http://www.usnews.com/news/science/n...rnia-to-alaska

Pacific Algae Bloom: It's The Biggest One They've Ever Seen
By Eric Chaney
Published Aug 6 2015 07:06 AM EDT
weather.com




A giant bloom of algae, commonly known as a red tide, floating off the Pacific coast may be larger and more widespread than scientists first believed.

This coastal ribbon of microscopic organisms, which stretches up to 40 miles wide and drops 650 feet below the surface in places, is flourishing amid unusually warm Pacific Ocean temperatures, reports the Associated Press.

(WATCH: Huge Toxic Algae Bloom off West Coast Prompting Alarm)

The current bloom, which stretches from California to Alaska, may be the biggest one ever recorded in the Pacific, University of Washington research analyst Anthony Odell said in a press release.

“It has also lasted for an incredibly long time — months, instead of the usual week or two.”

Researchers aboard the NOAA Ship Bell M Shimada have been sampling the algae bloom in the last several months. (NOAA)


According to UW, Odell has been surveying the spread of the algae from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research vessel Bell M. Shimada. He is part of a NOAA-led team of harmful algae experts who are mapping the extent of the patch and searching for “hot spots” — swirling eddies where previous research from the UW and NOAA shows the algae can grow and become toxic to marine animals and humans.

Odell told CBS News that the bloom, which is brownish in color rather than the green often found in lakes, was unusually dominated by one type of algae called Pseudo-nitzschia, which can produce the neurotoxin domoic acid.

(MORE: Turkish Lake Turns Red From Algae Bloom)

Domoic acid can build up in seas creatures such as fish and crabs, and in turn, the humans who eat them, which has huge implications for the coastal economy. According to a press release from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, the state has closed nearly half of its 157-mile-long coast to crab fishing. "Ongoing testing shows that crab in these waters have domoic acid levels that exceed health-safety standards," says Dan Ayres, coastal shellfish manager for the WDFW.

Researchers are hoping that the survey data will provide a clearer picture of what is causing the bloom, AP reports. Marine detectives already have a suspect: a large patch of water running as much as 3 degrees centigrade warmer than normal in the northeast Pacific Ocean, nicknamed "the blob."

(MORE: 'Warm Blob' of Water Causing Extreme Weather)

http://www.weather.com/science/news/giant-algae-bloom

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Stinking mats of seaweed piling up on Caribbean beaches

Tourists walk past large quantities of seaweed piling up on the beach in the Mexican resort city of Cancun on July 15, 2015.
(Israel Leal, AP)


By Tribune wire reports contact the reporter

Caribbean beaches are increasingly being fouled by mats of decaying seaweed that attract biting sand fleas.

Number of shorelines so severe that some lawmakers on Tobago have termed it a "natural disaster."


The picture-perfect beaches and turquoise waters that people expect on their visits to the Caribbean are increasingly being fouled by mats of decaying seaweed that attract biting sand fleas and smell like rotten eggs.

Clumps of the brownish seaweed known as sargassum have long washed up on Caribbean coastlines, but researchers say the algae blooms have exploded in extent and frequency in recent years. The 2015 seaweed invasion appears to be a bumper crop, with a number of shorelines so severely hit that some tourists have canceled summer trips and lawmakers on Tobago have termed it a "natural disaster."

Large quantities of seaweed lay ashore at the "Playa Los Machos" beach in Ceiba, Puerto Rico, on Aug. 8, 2015.
(Ricardo Arduengo, AP)


From the Dominican Republic in the north, to Barbados in the east, and Mexico's Caribbean resorts to the west, officials are authorizing emergency money to fund cleanup efforts and clear stinking mounds of seaweed that in some cases have piled up nearly 10 feet high on beaches, choked scenic coves and cut off moored boats.

With the start of the region's high tourism season a few months away, some officials are calling for an emergency meeting of the 15-nation Caribbean Community, worried that the worsening seaweed influx could become a chronic dilemma for the globe's most tourism-dependent region.

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"This has been the worst year we've seen so far. We really need to have a regional effort on this because this unsightly seaweed could end up affecting the image of the Caribbean," said Christopher James, chairman of the Tobago Hotel and Tourism Association.

There are various ideas about what is causing the seaweed boom that scientists say started in 2011, including warming ocean temperatures and changes in the ocean currents due to climate change. Some researchers believe it is primarily due to increased land-based nutrients and pollutants washing into the water, including nitrogen-heavy fertilizers and sewage waste that fuel the blooms.

Brian Lapointe, a sargassum expert at Florida Atlantic University, says that while the sargassum washing up in normal amounts has long been good for the Caribbean, severe influxes like those seen lately are "harmful algal blooms" because they can cause fish kills, beach fouling, tourism losses and even coastal dead zones.

CAPTION10. Fernando de Noronha in BrazilTripAdvisor.com


"Considering that these events have been happening since 2011, this could be the 'new normal.' Time will tell," Lapointe said by email.

The mats of drifting sargassum covered with berry-like sacs have become so numerous in the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean they are even drifting as far away as to West Africa, where they've been piling up fast in Sierre Leone and Ghana.

Sargassum, which gets its name from the Portuguese word for grape, is a floating brownish algae that generally blooms in the Sargasso Sea, a 2 million-square-mile (3 million-square-kilometer) body of warm water in the North Atlantic that is a major habitat and nursery for numerous marine species. Like coral reefs, the algae mats are critical habitats and mahi-mahi, tuna, billfish, eels, shrimp, crabs and sea turtles all use the algae to spawn, feed or hide from predators.

But some scientists believe the sargassum besieging a growing number of beaches may actually be due to blooms in the Atlantic's equatorial region, perhaps because of a high flow of nutrients from South America's Amazon and Orinoco Rivers mixing with warmer ocean temperatures.

"We think this is an ongoing equatorial regional event and our research has found no direct connection with the Sargasso Sea," said Jim Franks, senior research scientist at the University of Southern Mississippi's Gulf Coast Research Laboratory.

CAPTION10. Rhossili Bay in Swansea, WalesTripAdvisor.com


Whatever the reason, the massive sargassum flow is becoming a major challenge for tourism-dependent countries. In large doses, the algae harms coastal environments, even causing the deaths of endangered sea turtle hatchlings after they wriggle out of the sand where their eggs were buried. Cleanup efforts by work crews may also worsen beach erosion.

"We have heard reports of recently hatched sea turtles getting caught in the seaweed. If removal of seaweed involves large machinery that will also obviously cause impacts to the beaches and the ecosystems there," said Faith Bulger, program officer at the Washington-based Sargasso Sea Commission.

Mexican authorities recently said they will spend about $9.1 million and hire 4,600 temporary workers to clean up seaweed mounds accumulating along that country's Caribbean coast.

Part of the money will be used to test whether the sargassum can be collected at sea before it reaches shore.

Some tourists in hard-hit areas are trying to prevent their summer vacations from being ruined by the stinking algae.

"The smell of seaweed is terrible, but I'm enjoying the sun," German tourist Oliver Pahlke said during a visit to Cancun, Mexico.

Sitting at a picnic table on the south coast of Barbados, Canadian vacationer Anne Alma said reports of the rotting seaweed mounds she'd heard from friends did not dissuade her from visiting the Eastern Caribbean island.

"I just wonder where the seaweed is going to go," the Toronto resident said one recent morning, watching more of mats drift to shore even after crews had already trucked away big piles to use as mulch and fertilizers.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifest...810-story.html

U.S. probes deaths of 30 whales along southern Alaska coast

By Eric M. Johnson 2 hours ago
By Eric M. Johnson

SEATTLE (Reuters) - U.S. marine biologists have launched an investigation into the mass die-off of 30 whales found washed ashore along Alaska's southern coast this summer, nearly three times the region's average for this time of year, a federal official said on Friday.

Since May 2015, the carcasses of 11 fin whales, 14 humpback whales, one gray whale, and four other whales of indeterminate species turned up along the western Gulf of Alaska, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

NOAA declared the cluster of whale deaths "an unusual mortality event" on Thursday, triggering a formal agency inquiry into the strandings that will bring together federal and local experts in a specially funded team.

"While we do not yet know the cause of these strandings, our investigations will give us important information on the health of whales and the ecosystems where they live," said Teri Rowles, a NOAA marine mammal health and stranding response coordinator.

A leading hypothesis for the cause of the deaths, NOAA fisheries spokeswoman Julie Speegle said, is that they may be linked to a toxic algae bloom in the Pacific Ocean along the U.S. West Coast that has led to the closure of shellfish harvests in Washington state, Oregon and California.

The bloom, which first appeared in May, involves microscopic algae that produce a neurotoxin potentially fatal to humans called domoic acid.

The 30 whales found dead so far this summer washed ashore along a span of coastline stretching more than 1,000 miles (1,600 km) from south of Anchorage to the Aleutian Islands.

To date, the strandings tally amounts to almost three times the historical average for such whale deaths in the region, NOAA said.

The most recent whale carcass in the group was found in mid-August, according to Speegle.

The formal investigation was expected to begin as early as September, and could take months, even years, of data collection and analysis, she said.

http://news.yahoo.com/u-probes-death...003528810.html