Word: algal
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Algal blooms are a common and often menacing event along many U.S. coastlines. Some strains are toxic and can close beaches and poison seafood, posing a hazard to consumers. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) maintains a forecasting system for the Gulf of Mexico to warn of harmful Florida blooms. On Thursday, on the other side of the continent, Senator Olympia Snowe, a Maine Republican, urged the NOAA to direct at least $500,000 to assess a disastrous red tide - a form of algal bloom. "The state of Maine is currently besieged by the most virulent red tide event...
While Alaskans may find the algal blob unusual if not frightening, scientists say they are nothing new in Arctic Ocean waters, though the blob itself might be a little weird. Brenda Konar, a marine biology professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, says algal outbreaks can and do occur even in icy Arctic waters. It just takes the right combination of nutrients, light and water temperature, she says. "Algae blooms," she says. "It's sort of like a swimming pool that hasn't been cleaned in a while." The blob, Konar says, is a microalgae made up of "billions...
...South Florida is having an ecological and hydrological meltdown, the legacy of a century of plumbing and dredging and growing without much thinking. The Everglades ecosystem now hosts 69 threatened or endangered species, and its rookeries and fisheries have crashed. Massive algal blooms are turning Florida Bay into pea soup. The region's reefs have lost up to 95% of their elkhorn coral; persistent red tides have made it tough for sunbathers to breathe at the beach...
...lagoons, where it decomposes anaerobically before being sprayed onto fields. Those fields, the lawsuits charge, can't absorb the untreated waste - an alleged "witch's brew of nearly 400 volatile organic compounds and toxic poisons" - fast enough. Some of it rains down or seeps into waterways, where it causes algal blooms, fish kills and shellfish diseases, according to the suit...
...into rivers find the ocean. (Midway's albatrosses have in their tissues as much of the industrial chemicals called PCBs as do Great Lakes bald eagles.) The biggest sources of coastal pollution are waste from farm animals, fertilizers and human sewage. They can spawn red tides and other harmful algal blooms that rob oxygen from the water, killing sea life. The Mississippi River, whose fine heartland silt once built fertile delta wetlands, now builds in the Gulf of Mexico a spreading dead zone--almost devoid of marine life--the size of New Jersey. Improving sewage treatment and cleaning...