An Israeli Ph.D student’s case study on a kind of deadly algae, may just help to make drinking water safer for people and animals alike.

It almost sounds like a zany plot from a cartoon from a super villain: A beautiful, yet very deadly, kind of blue-green algae, forces other microorganisms found in fresh water to do its bidding, which enables them to over run the water, and threaten the health of people and animals all over the world.

These devious cyanobacteria algae – known as the thorns in the sides of the freshwater populaces – are not cartoon characters however. A paper recently published on August the 12th in the journal Current Biology, a scientist over at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem explains to us how they take over their competition and are very prolific, raising concern around the world due to the detrimental impact they could pose on the quality of water.

By enlightening us on how the algae function, Yehonatan Bar-Yosef’s case study can help other experts find out how to deal with this threat and ensure that drinking water is safe for humans and animals all over the world.

Back in 1994, a huge bloom of this toxic algae was discovered in Lake Kinneret, which is also known as the Sea of Galilee. A lot of the potable water for Israel is taken from the Kinneret, so this discovery really raised red flags.

Luckily for us Bar-Yosef is delving into the matter, and could conceivably come up with an enzyme to help battle this dastardly algae.

Good luck Bar-Yosef, we are all rooting for you. Hopefully he will crack the code, and help everyone in the world.

Healthy reef

Blooms of toxic algae could possibly wipe out coral reefs.

Researchers who have been studying the coral reefs in the Gulf of Oman have sounded the alarm after a big algae bloom laid waste to an entire coral reef in just three short weeks.

Some ninety-five percent of the hard coral directal under the algae died off, and seventy percent fewer fish were found in the vicinity.

The algae grows rapidly and hog all the sunlight and oxygen which the coral need to survive.

Add in climate change, development along the coasts, overfishing and pollution and you have a rather bleak outlook for the coral reefs of the world.

The biggest threat facing the coral reefs is climate change, which has caused many coral bleaching events around the globe.

However, this latest discovery, which was published in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin postulates that algal blooms are just as much a threat to the coral reefs.

Scientists from the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health had taken it upon themselves to study the environment of two different coral reefs in the Gulf of Oman.

After they finished up their first study, an algae bloom which measured over 500 square kilometers happened in the area.

After the scientists made a return visit some three weeks after the fact, they discovered that the coral under the bloom had been almost completely destroyed.

So, it appears that the coral is facing yet another threat, algae. Scientists are now working on a way to help the reefs, but since this is a new phenomena it might take some time.

According to predictions made by a team of NOAA-supported scientists from the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, Louisiana State University, and the University of Michigan, the Gulf of Mexico “dead zone” is likely to become record big this summer. If there predictions are true, we will see a dead zone the size of New Jersey (7,450 to 8,456 square miles). Additional flooding of the Mississippi River since May can however increase these numbers even further.

What is the Gulf of Mexico ‘dead zone’?

The dead zone is an area off the coast of Louisiana and Texas in the Gulf of Mexico where the oxygen level seasonally drops so low that most life forms living in and close to the bottom dies.

Dead zones are the result of large amounts of nutrients reaching the water, e.g. through waterways polluted by sewage and agricultural runoff. The excess nutrients stimulate rapid and massive algae growth in the affected area, a so called algae bloom. When the algae die, they sink to the bottom where oxygen dependant bacteria begin to break them down. The decomposition process consumes vast amounts of oxygen and soon the bottom and near-bottom waters become so oxygen depleted that all sorts of oxygen breathing organisms begin to die. This so called hypoxic area (an area where the oxygen levels are low to non-existent) is not just a problem for wildlife; it can also damage the economy of nearby states since it destroys habitat necessary for commercial and recreational Gulf fisheries.

The largest dead zone on record appeared in 2002 and measured 8,484 square miles.

Mississippi and Atchafalaya Rivers too rich in nutrients

During April and May this year, the Mississippi and Atchafalaya Rivers experienced heavy water flows that were 11 percent above average.

“The high water volume flows coupled with nearly triple the nitrogen concentrations in these rivers over the past 50 years from human activities has led to a dramatic increase in the size of the dead zone,” said Gene Turner, Ph.D., a lead forecast modeler from Louisiana State University.

“As with weather forecasts, this forecast uses multiple models to predict the range of the expected size of the dead zone“, said Robert Magnien, Ph.D., director of NOAA’s Center for Sponsored Coastal Ocean Research. “The strong track record of these models reinforces our confidence in the link between excess nutrients from the Mississippi River and the dead zone.”

A strange algae plume has turned the normally crystal clear Caribbean Sea around the Virgin Islands green down to a depth of roughly 80 feet (25 metres) and sharply decreased visibility in these popular dive waters. How and if the plume will have any long-term effect on the region’s marine life remains unknown.

Tyler Smith, assistant professor at the Center for Marine and Environmental Studies at the University of the Virgin Islands, said that when he went diving Tuesday the visibility inside the plume was no more than 10 feet (3 metres). Below 80 feet, the water was just as clear as normally.

The reason behind the extraordinary plume can be found in South America, in the Orinoco River which flows through Venezuela before reaching the Atlantic Ocean. When the Orinoco outflow is larger than normal, the vast amounts of nutrient-rich freshwater from Venezuela cause a major algae bloom in the nearby ocean. Mixed fresh- and saltwater is lighter than seawater and will therefore rise to the top of the water column.

“It’s very stable, so it just sits there,” Smith explains.

Carried by currents, the algae plume has now spread from the South American east-coast to the Caribbean Sea and can currently be seen not only off the British and U.S. Virgin Islands but in Puerto Rican waters as well. The first patch was noticed by Smith and his colleagues in the waters off St. Croix on April 9.

When the amount of photosynthesising alga increases in a region, it attracts all sorts of organisms that feed on algae and make it possible for these populations to boom as well. The algae plume around the Virgin Islands supports an entire food chain of marine life, including plankton, jellyfish, crustaceans and fish. It is not dangerous to swim or scuba dive in, but some people might dislike the high density of jellyfish.

“This is an event that occurs every year, but we haven’t seen it come this far north,” says Trika Gerard, marine ecologist with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). In a stroke of good luck, a NOAA research vessel was scheduled to research reef fish in these waters from April 7 to April 20 – right at the peak of the unexpected plume.

To find out more about how the plume effects marine life, the Caribbean Fisheries Management Council is urging anyone who goes out fishing in the green plume to report their location, target species and success rate of each trip. According to local fishermen the fishing is always awfully bad when the water is green, but this has not been scientifically researched yet and all data is of interest.

You can reach the Caribbean Fisheries Management Council by calling (787) 766-5927. Their website is http://www.caribbeanfmc.com.