29 thousand square kilometres of coastal green goo is a lot, even for China. That is the size of the algae bloom now blanketing
China's Yellow Sea coastline. Here's a Chinese beachgoer wading through the stuff.
Pictures on Thursday showed beachgoers swimming and playing in the
green tide in the eastern city of Qingdao, while bulldozers shovelled up
tonnes of algae from the sand.
The State Oceanic Administration said on its website the
algae, enteromorpha prolifera, started to appear a week ago and had
spread across an area of 28,900 square kilometres.
The algal phenomenon is usually caused by an abundance of nutrients
in the water, especially phosphorus, although the triggers for the
enormous blooms which began to appear in the Yellow Sea in 2007 remain
uncertain.
The China Daily quoted professor Bao Xianwen, of the
Qingdao-based Ocean University of China, as saying: ‘‘It must have
something to do with the change in the environment but we are not
scientifically sure about the reasons.’’
The algae are not toxic nor detrimental to water quality but
lead to extreme imbalances in marine ecosystems by consuming large
quantities of oxygen and creating hydrogen sulphide.
When I was in Qingdao ..pronunciation Shingdow...in 2007, the local Chinese government offical said, while being interviewed on TV regarding the green sludge, it was the cause of an increase in water temperature.
ReplyDeleteAs a youngster I lived in the south end of Oshawa, Ontario, only a few blocks from the north shore of Lake Ontario. Almost every summer we would get heavy algal blooms during hot weather which often resulted in sizable fish kills and would render the shoreline and beaches in the area unswimmable. Worse by far, though, was the smell of all that green guck and dead fish decaying in the hot sun that would linger over the area for weeks on end. I can only begin to imagine how our Chinese friends are suffering with it right now...
ReplyDeleteN.