[cogitator]

Living in the Chesapeake Bay watershed in Maryland, we're now paying a "flush tax" to pay for improvements in wastewater treatment plants to cut down on the amount of nutrients pouring into the Bay. Hopefully that'll help a little.

[gridlock]

Hopefully that'll help a little.

Until they start taking out those ChemLawn trucks with RPGs, I'm afraid the situation is hopeless. Every manicured lawn is dumping nutrients right into the watershed. It's all gotta go somewhere!

[GreenFreeper]

This is a big problem in the Great Lakes region as well. From our digital orthophotos we can see algal blooms as well as sediment plumes coming from the tributaries. This is going to be a hotbed issue.

[farmfriend]

Rights, farms, environment ping.
Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from this list.
I don't get offended if you want to be removed.

[Smokin' Joe]

Not until they quit dumping sewage sludge on agricultural land, (within 25 ft. of the water).

[untrained skeptic]

Let me see if I understand this correctly. Algal blooms can either be very good or very bad.

On the good side the nutrients are feeding algae that is important to the food chain in the ocean.

On the bad side, some types of algae release bad toxins.

Which happened in the blooms in Mexico?

I'm a bit skeptical about this report, because it seems to be leaving a lot of information out.

It talks about red tides and hypoxia, but it doesn't say that they saw evidence of those occurrences in the areas they were observing.

They mention problems with hypoxia at the end of Mississippi river, but they don't really show that they have any evidence to show that it's related to algal blooms or nutrient runoff. I suspect that there are a lot of different pollutants in the Mississippi river, what ties the hypoxia to the nutrients?

The article mentions bacteria that eats the algae uses up oxygen. However green algae is the biggest source of oxygen in the oceans. I'm having a hard time buying the argument that more green algae results in a net loss of oxygen levels in the water. That kind of seems to violate the natural cycle.

""In the Sea of Cortez, there's the possibility that hypoxia could occur at a local scale, which could be devastating to the shrimp and shellfish industries," Matson said"

Sounds like another way of saying that we saw widespread evidence of algal blooms but no evidence of hypoxia, yet you should still be concerned because we say it could be happening.

""Shrimp fisheries are very important economically, and they're already under a lot of stress from overfishing and aquaculture. It is possible that agricultural runoff could cause additional stress if it does lead to toxic blooms or hypoxia." She and her colleagues plan to conduct follow-up studies to assess the ecological impact of Yaqui Valley runoff events."

Shrimp eat algae. So unless the runoff is causing toxic blooms, I would think that the shrimp population would thrive during algal blooms. If the shrimp populations are low, it sounds like there might be other causes.

It sounds like they gathered some good information with their research. However the tone of the article seems to imply that these algal blooms are bad. All they've done so far is show that the nutrients appear to effect algae growth, but they don't know what type of algae or if it's good or bad.

They appear to be concentrating on possible harm. It always scares me when environmentalists go into research and appear to already assume that there is harm being caused, and then look for evidence that they are right.

[PigRigger]

We experience the same problems in the Great South Bay off of Long Island every few years; we call it brown tide.

The blooms have decimated the shell fishing industry in the region. It has also added to the decline in the fishing industry; although over fishing was probably the main culprit.

What was once a very bountiful ecosystem was experiencing a slow death.

Laws have helped in stabilizing the bay; in time it may one day came back. Only time will tell.