Friday, July 05, 2013

Largest algae bloom ever or biggest 'algae 'ka-bloom' ever has plagued swimmers at China beaches!


The image above is not a golf course fairway but rather an algae bloom of "biblical proportions."

How do I define "an algae bloom of "biblical proportions?" This 'ka-bloom' is so large that is is about half the size of Rhode Island or twice the square area of Los Angeles.

The bloom is not dangerous but who wants to swim in grass; though it might make make for a fantastic photo of a group fo swimmers doing butterfly with a turbulent contrail streaming behind them.

From APF:
"... The State Oceanic Administration said on its website that the algae, enteromorpha prolifera, started to appear a week ago and had spread across an area of 28,900 square kilometres (7,500 square miles). The previous largest bloom was in 2008 when it affected around 13,000 square kilometres, it said. ..." 
[Link]

I am told that algae blooms are attracted to lots of phosphorus and China has lots of it and somehow it's finding it's way into the water. Personally I feel that if China is going to accept large amounts of phosphorus to sink into their water via run-off or whatever, they should perhaps consider harvesting the algae and aggressively protect the ocean life they depend upon.

You can do interesting things with algae and one of them is that you can convert into oil simply by cooking it. (It only takes one minute to convert algae into oil.)

This algae bloom is safe to swim and swimmers are not at risk. However, when this algae runs it's course and dies, imagine an area twice the size of Los Angeles smelling like rotten eggs? Yep, it's "swan song" will be named sulphur.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Very true... while not toxic now, it won't be so much fun when all that algae dies off!