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Author Topic: no fish on the menu for ? ?  (Read 2717 times)

space otter

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no fish on the menu for ? ?
« on: August 09, 2015, 05:13:07 pm »


http://calcoastnews.com/2015/06/algal-bloom-reaches-record-levels/




Algal bloom reaches record levels
June 28, 2015
A harmful algal bloom that runs from the Central Coast of California to Washington State, has reached an unprecedented size. The concentrations of domoic acid appear to be the highest ever recorded along California’s Central Coast. [Santa Cruz Sentinel]

As a result, officials are warning people not to eat recreationally harvested mussels and clams, commercially caught anchovies and sardines, or the internal organs of commercially or recreationally caught crab taken from the waters off Monterey and Santa Cruz counties.

Oregon has closed the entire coast to clamming and the northern Oregon coast to shellfish harvesting.

Its not completely clear yet whether there is a connection between this and the warm water offshore. UCSC oceanographers are attempting to find links between warming ocean temperatures and the massive harmful algal bloom.

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http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/06/18/3671377/pacific-ocean-massive-toxic-algal-bloom/

Huge Toxic Algal Bloom Shuts Down West Coast Fisheries
by Natasha Geiling Jun 18, 2015 4:05pm

Commercial and recreational fisheries up and down the West Coast have been forced to close as a result of a massive toxic algal bloom, which scientists are describing as one of the largest in history.

“We have received reports of this particular bloom causing problems as far south as Monterey Bay and we’ve heard from our colleagues in Homer, Alaska that they’re seeing these cells,” Vera Trainer, manager of the Marine Biotoxin Program at NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center, told ThinkProgress. “It’s geographically very widespread, more so than we’ve seen in the past.”

The last time an algal bloom of comparative size occurred on the West Coast was in 1988. That bloom stretched from San Diego up to Washington.

Essentially what we’ve got is just perfect plankton growing weather
Algal blooms happen when microscopic marine algae — also known as phytoplankton — proliferate in huge numbers. This proliferation results in a buildup of toxins such as domoic acid, a powerful and fatal neurotoxin. High concentrations of algae — or domoic acid — aren’t uncommon, occurring in the Pacific primarily in the fall, when ocean temperatures tend to be at their warmest. But according to Dan Ayers, coastal shellfish manager with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, to see such an intense and extensive concentration of toxic algae in the late spring and summer months is more rare.

“The thing that is so significant of this bloom is its timing,” Ayers told ThinkProgress. “In the past, these blooms have occurred in the fall just prior to change of ocean conditions to a winter regime.”

Scientists are unsure exactly what is causing the historic bloom, though Trainer said that it is likely related to unusually warm ocean temperatures.

“We’ve had an unusually warm and sunny spring, and that not only affects our land plants, but the sea plants,” she said.

Scientists first noticed a patch of unusually warm water off the West Coast in the fall of 2013, and have since attributed everything from the California drought to the recent swarm of red crabs on California beaches to the so-called “blob.” Though the blob has since dissipated, ocean temperatures off the Pacific coast remain about 2° Celsius warmer than normal.

“Essentially what we’ve got is just perfect plankton growing weather,” Ayers said.

Domoic acid can end up in anything that feeds off of algae, from filter feeders like shellfish to small fish like sardines. The animals that feed on those organisms can also become poisoned by the toxins; Trainer described a sea lion observed having seizures early this week off the Washington coast as a result of eating contaminated fish. The sea lion had to be euthanized.

“It has really disruptive impacts to the ecosystems,” Raphael Kudela, professor of ocean studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, told ThinkProgress. “The sea lions and the birds don’t pay attention to the warnings, so they’re the ones that are really being impacted. It’s much more a wildlife concern at the moment than a human health concern.”

The bloom isn’t without its impacts to humans, however, especially for small coastal communities. All beaches along the Washington coast have been closed to razor clamming, a closure that comes at a critical time for coastal towns that were expecting tourism revenue from recreational clammers. The state has also closed half of its coast to commercial Dungeness crab fisheries, a move that Ayers called “unprecedented.”

“We’ve never closed [Dungeness fisheries] because of harmful algae blooms,” he said, adding that while the large part of the commercial season is over, there are still some 30 to 50 small crabbing boats active.

“Each of those boats have three to four guys that depend on that income,” Ayers said. “It’s not a huge impact for the wider economy, but to the local economy it is a huge impact.”

Trainer also explained that the algal bloom can have an outsized impact on tribal communities, which tend to live far from grocery stores and depend more on shellfish and crabs for both food and religious ceremonies.

“It’s not only an economic impact, it’s a social impact,” Trainer said.

The conditions this year are sort of a window to the future, they’re a sign of things to come
“Washington isn’t the only state whose fisheries have been impacted by the bloom. Oregon has stopped all shellfish harvesting from the Columbia River to just north of Cannon Beach, and has closed the entire coast to razor clamming. In California, coastal fisheries are keeping a close eye on the toxin levels in their shellfish — last week, mussels

in Santa Barbara surpassed the threshold for toxicity, but this week have returned to safe levels.

On Monday, NOAA deployed a research vessel to better understand the ocean conditions that are causing the bloom. The vessel will collect water and algae samples from areas off the Mexico border to the tip of Vancouver Island during its three-month journey, slated to end September 11.

But Trainer and Kudela hope that the samples collected from the ship will tell scientists about more than just the present bloom. They hope that by providing a more complete picture of the physical properties that encourage algal blooms, scientists will gain a better understanding of how climate change might impact those blooms in the future.

“The conditions this year are sort of a window to the future, they’re a sign of things to come,” Trainer said. “We want to know if that is indeed the case. Is this what we’re going to be seeing more of as our oceans continue to warm?”

Scientists worry that algal blooms will get worse with climate change. Algae tends to grow better in warmer waters, both because some species prefer warmer waters and because warm waters are less prone to mixing, which impedes algae from growing. Changes in rainfall patterns could also make algal blooms worse, with large downpours creating more of a chance for nutrient runoff, which helps feed algal blooms.






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Aug 1, 2015 - While algal blooms are not uncommon in the Pacific, 2015's blooms appear to be the largest on record, scientists say.


http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/8/1/scientists-fear-toxic-algae-bloom-continues-to-spread.html
Scientists fear toxic algae bloom spreading on Pacific coast
Stretching from southern California to Alaska, this year’s blooms thought to be the largest ever recorded
August 1, 2015 5:00AM ET
by Ryan Schuessler @RyanSchuessler1
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The toxic algae blooms in the Pacific Ocean stretching from southern California to Alaska — already the largest ever recorded — appear to have reached as far as the Aleutian Islands, scientists say.

“The anecdotal evidence suggests we’re having a major event,” said Bruce Wright, a scientist with the Aleutian Pribilof Island Association, the federally recognized tribal organization of Alaska’s native Aleuts. “All the populations [of marine mammals] are way down in the Aleutians.”

While algal blooms are not uncommon in the Pacific, 2015’s blooms appear to be the largest on record, scientists say. Stretching from Southern California to Alaska, the blooms are responsible for unprecedented closures of fisheries and unusual deaths of marine life up and down the Pacific coast.

Pseudo-nitzchia is one species of algae that produces domoic acid, a neurotoxin that can be lethal to humans and wildlife. The toxin is ingested by shellfish and krill that, when consumed, pass the toxin onto the predator — in some cases, people.

Raphael Kudela, a professor of ocean sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said climate change may be a factor enabling the blooms to thrive. “I think, personally, it’s quite possible that these warm conditions just set up the ideal incubator conditions for this organism. It’s doing really well and lasting a lot longer than usual.”

In California, researchers in Monterey Bay observed some of the highest levels of the toxin ever seen. Oregon’s Department of Agriculture has shut down recreational harvest of razor clams along much of its coast. In Washington, authorities instituted an unprecedented closure of the state’s lucrative Dungeness crab fisheries. A fishery near Vancouver was closed in June over concerns of the algae’s toxin, which can cause seizures and death if consumed by humans.

“In Monterey, things have kind of calmed down a bit,” said Kudela. “We have been monitoring several times a week now. We still see toxin, so it hasn’t gone away.”

He added that the bloom may have moved further offshore and deeper in the ocean.

The algae were detected in southeastern Alaska in June. The discovery of nearly a dozen dead whales in the Gulf of Alaska near Kodiak also raised suspicion.

A dead sea lion that washed up near Unalaska in the Aleutian Islands is what prompted the most recent round of testing, Unalaska’s community broadcast network KUCB reported. Other die-offs of species have been reported along the Aleutian chain, stretching nearly 1,500 miles across the north Pacific, 2,000 miles north of Seattle.

“The best thing to keep an eye on is if they keeping seeing it in Alaska,” Kudela said. “And that would be a pretty clear indication of if the bloom has extended.”

“There’s just not a lot of resources going into understanding these big algal blooms,” Wright said. “The government doesn’t spend a lot of money on it, and I think that’s a big mistake. And in the future I think that’s going to be a big mistake as waters continue to warm in the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea.”

Wright added: “[Algal blooms] have the potential of taking out fisheries.”

Late last month, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration gave the state of Washington nearly $100,000 to continue to monitor the bloom.

Vera Trainer, a University of Washington researcher and manager of NOAA’s Harmful Algal Blooms Program, said expeditions are underway to try to map the bloom. What remains to be seen is whether or not there is one contiguous bloom, or several large ones.

“It does appear to be rather contiguous,” Trainer said. “What we’ve seen in past years is that we’ll have a bloom in California, and a little bit later in the year we’ll have a bloom in Washington. This one seemed to happen all at the same time.”

Kudela said researchers have found the toxin in anchovies and other fish. “We know that can happen, but generally the blooms don’t last long enough to see that transfer occur.” Trainer said that sea lions had never before been seen having seizures off the coast of Washington, a symptom of poisoning from the algae.

Research expeditions are underway along the Pacific coast and into the Gulf of Alaska to try to map the bloom. The last ship is due back in September, and Trainer expects a clearer picture of what exactly is happening by the end of the year.

Kudela said whether or not this year’s bloom is the “new normal” is “the million dollar question,” said.

“We could go into three years in a row of having really toxic algae out there and it getting into the food web,” he said.

Shellfish and other seafood are a staple in the diet of coastal communities up and down the Pacific coast, including many Native communities.

Wright, who has been studying toxic algal blooms since the 1970s, said many elders in Alaska Native communities have been alarmed by the increasing frequency of the toxic algae blooms, which threaten their traditional way of life.

“But those are the kinds of changes we’re going to see with climate change,” Wright said. “We’re going to have to change and adapt and we’re going to have to lose some of our traditions, and that’s just the way it is.”







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http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/08/05/3688199/lake-erie-algae-bloom-is-back/
by Natasha Geiling Aug 5, 2015 1:00pm

Lake Erie’s Enormous Algae Bloom Is Back



For the second year in a row, a harmful algae bloom is beginning to form in Lake Erie — and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has predicted that this year’s algae bloom could rival that of 2011, the most severe bloom on record.

During that record bloom, close to 20 percent of Lake Erie was covered by a green-tinged algae — technically cyanobacteria, a type of aquatic bacteria that uses photosynthesis to create energy and thrives in warm conditions. In a 2013 Ecowatch report, scientists from Oregon State University called it “the cockroaches of the aquatic world.”

This is the same type of algae that disrupted the Ohio city of Toldeo’s water supply for three days last summer, prompting officials to issue a tap water ban. In large amounts, an algae bloom can produce a harmful toxin known as microcystin, which, if consumed, can cause dizziness, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and liver damage. Boiling doesn’t kill the toxin — it just makes it worse.

“Last summer’s Toledo water crisis was a wake-up call to the serious nature of harmful algal blooms in America’s waters,” Jeff Reutter, senior advisor to Ohio State University’s Sea Grant program and Stone Laboratory, said at a NOAA press conference in July. “This forecast once again focuses attention on this issue, and the urgent need to take action to address the problems caused by excessive amounts of nutrients from fertilizer, manure and sewage flowing into our lakes and streams.”

In the years following World War II, factories dumped huge amounts of phosphorous-laced waste water into the Great Lakes, spurring algae blooms and widespread pollution. The Clean Water Act curbed some of that pollution, and for a time the health of the Great Lakes seemed to be on the mend. But industrial farming, which brings with it huge amounts of fertilizer runoff from corn and soybean operations, is at least partly responsible for a recent surge in algae bloom activity in the Great Lakes region. Of all the phosphorous that makes its way into the Lake Erie Basin, 61 percent of it comes from cultivated cropland.

But increased phosphorous from commercial agriculture might be just one factor in Lake Erie’s algae uptick. Timothy Davis, a NOAA research ecologist specializing in harmful algae blooms, told National Geographic that some of the recent increase in blooms “can be attributed to global

Climate change is also predicted to increase the intensity of rainfall and flooding that occurs around the Great Lakes in the coming decades, something that could lead to more phosphorus from fertilizer being washed into waterways instead of absorbed into cropland. Phosphorous can also make its way into waterways from leaky septic tanks and aging stormwater and sewage infrastructure. An increase in precipitation could overwhelm this infrastructure — especially those which combine stormwater and sewage in the same system — pushing more nutrients from sewage into waterways where it can feed algae blooms.

Earlier this year, 18 international researchers published a study in Science arguing that human activity has already pushed the planet beyond four of nine environmental boundaries, making the planet less hospitable to life in the process. One of these boundaries that had been crossed was biogeochemical flows — nitrogen and phosphorus cycles that have been disrupted in large part due to fertilizer overuse and mismanagement.





“For the first time in human history, we need to relate to the risk of destabilizing the entire planet,” Johan Rockstrom, one of the study’s authors, told Reuters after the study’s publication. “We are at a point where we may see abrupt and irreversible changes due to climate change.”

So far, the 2015 algae bloom underway in Lake Erie hasn’t caused any public health scares — according to a report in Bridge Magazine, Toledo officials found small amounts of microcystin at the city’s water intake cribs, but the levels were not high enough to prompt a tap water ban. Still, some residents — frightened by the magnitude of last year’s bloom — are stocking up on bottled water, calling another bloom “inevitable.” The city has since installed an early warning system near its intake as well as a filtration system, leading some residents to express renewed trust in Toledo’s ability to handle algae blooms.

The Great Lakes aren’t the only place battling an increase in algae blooms, however. According to the Environmental Protection Agency’s most recent National Lakes Assessment, nearly one-quarter of all lakes sampled for cyanobacteria presented moderate or high risks to cyanotoxins like microcystin. Around the world, algae blooms are on the rise, popping up in places like Brazil, China, and Australia.



space otter

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Re: no fish on the menu for ? ?
« Reply #1 on: August 16, 2015, 08:27:39 pm »
http://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/this-blue-green-water-may-look-stunning-but-its-also-seriously-bad-news/ar-BBlLK4g

PRI
Michele Berger, Science Friday
13 hrs ago




This blue-green water may look stunning, but it's also seriously bad news


© Phil Myers/Toledo Aerial Media

That electric green you see, juxtaposed with the water’s deep blue, makes for an eye-catching image. But in reality, it’s the “visual manifestation of an unhealthy ecosystem,” according to Timothy Davis, a molecular ecologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The green signifies blue-green algae (which are technically photosynthetic bacteria). In great abundance, they can wreak havoc on lake ecosystems. Harmful algal bloom, or HAB, crops up in the Great Lakes annually around this time, and for Lake Erie, pictured, this year is lining up to be one of the worst that Davis has seen in a decade.

“Until June we were actually predicting a smaller than average bloom,” he says, “and then June happened.” It was one of the wettest on record, leading to more agricultural runoff containing nutrients — phosphorus, mostly, and some nitrogen — into the lake, which has spurred blue-green algae growth.

Those nutrients come primarily from fertilizers and manure that drain from farmland into nearby watersheds, eventually wending into larger water bodies such as Lake Erie. How much gets in and how quickly depends a good deal on weather.

“When we have a drought, everything is great in Lake Erie,” says Jeff Reutter, a special advisor to the Ohio Sea Grant & Stone Lab, which works with NOAA to issue HAB forecasts. “When we have a really wet year, we get a huge load of phosphorus coming in.

Farmers prefer fertilizer made with dissolved phosphorus, which helps crops grow better than particulate phosphorus. But blue-green algae thrive on it, too. “Since the mid-'90s, the amount of dissolved phosphorus going into Lake Erie [from the nearby Maumee River] has gone up 144 percent,” says Reutter. And when the water warms up to around 60 degrees Fahrenheit, the algae blossoms.

Harmful algal blooms stop light from penetrating the water, preventing shallow, bottom-dwelling plants from photosynthesizing. Then, when the algae decay, bacteria that break them down consume oxygen in the process, imperiling fish. Plus, there’s evidence that a species of blue-green algae common in Lake Erie blooms—Microcystis aeruginosa—can be toxic to humans, potentially causing rashes, nausea and vomiting, and in extreme cases, liver damage. According to Reutter, this year’s lake bloom has already made several people sick.

“We do know that [the blooms] do come back next year if nothing gets done,” Davis says. “The million dollar question is, what can we do to make the blooms smaller and less toxic? We need to reduce the nutrients coming in off of the land.” The solution may result in less compelling photos, but ultimately healthier water.

This story was first published by Science Friday with Ira Flatow.



Offline zorgon

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Re: no fish on the menu for ? ?
« Reply #2 on: August 17, 2015, 02:09:09 am »
This was a couple years ago  I was looking for red algae bloom in 2015... but these images are awesome  Almost biblical :P


Some of Sydney's most popular beaches were closed as the water turned blood red. A few tourists reportedly feared it was the blood from a shark attack, but the colour was caused by a bloom of algae.
A mother and her daughter check out the red algal bloom in the water at Clovelly Beach in Sydney



Bondi and Clovelly beaches closed as a safety precaution. While the red algae, known as Noctiluca scintillans or sea sparkle, is not particularly toxic, people are still advised to avoid swimming in areas with discoloured water because the algae, which can be high in ammonia, can cause skin irritation.
A swimmer heads towards a red algae bloom at Sydney's Clovelly Beach



Australia's Daily Telegraph reported that Bondi reopened in the afternoon after the algae bloom broke up sufficiently, but some tourists had ignored the warnings and gone for a swim anyway.
Red algal bloom is seen in a wave at Bondi Beach in Sydney



Marine biologist Fred Gurgel told the Australian newspaper: "It is potentially dangerous, it produces toxins and varies from people to people."
A girl checks out the red algal bloom in the water at Clovelly Beach in Sydney



Algae of various colours appears occasionally on Sydney beaches, though rarely with such dramatic visual effect. Local authorities told Fairfax Media the algal bloom was due to an "upwelling of nutrient rich deep ocean water onto the continental shelf".
A seagull searches for a meal in the algal bloom which has killed many fish in the water off the coast of Sydney


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/picturegalleries/9705809/Sydneys-beaches-closed-as-algae-turns-the-sea-blood-red.html

Offline Shasta56

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Re: no fish on the menu for ? ?
« Reply #3 on: August 17, 2015, 06:52:31 pm »
We had the orange Animas River for a while.  None of the mine owners seem inclined to take any responsibility for their defunct mines sending toxic soup down the river.  I realize that the mines date back to we'll before environmental protection was considered, but that's not an excuse for looking the other way. 

Shasta



« Last Edit: August 17, 2015, 10:02:14 pm by zorgon »
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