To anyone who has spent a languid summer afternoon tumbling in the waves on South Beach or watched the earth’s closest star dip into the horizon at Menemsha, the ocean can seem eternal and unchanging. But scientists are increasingly discovering that human activity is transforming what was once thought to be an invulnerable resource. The [...]
As a first-ever precautionary response to an unprecedented bloom of the toxic alga Pseudo-nitzschia in its waters, Maine officials have temporarily banned shellfish harvesting along part of the coast. A survey cruise and a volunteer monitoring network, both funded by the National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science, identified the bloom species and mapped where and how big [...]
When tiny aquatic organisms reproduce in large amounts, algal blooms occur that take over portions of open water up to hundreds of miles in area. And when these oceanic plankton happen to be the toxic kind, they can be deadly to other living things crossing their path. One of the most poisonous and abundant of [...]
A University of Connecticut researcher and his team have discovered that a species of tiny aquatic organism prominent in harmful algal blooms sometimes called “red tide” is even deadlier than first thought, with potential consequences for entire marine food chains. Professor Hans Dam and his research group in the school’s Department of Marine Sciences have [...]
In a new paper, researchers funded by the National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science discovered that the New England red tide species called Alexandrium releases a variety of compounds to kill its predators and lengthen bloom duration. In this case, the substance they use for defense is not the potent neurotoxin that accumulates in shellfish [...]
Due to blooms of the type of algae Alexandrium that cause paralytic shellfish poisoning, mussel oyster and clam harvesting was recently shut down along some sections of the Maine coast. Algae is starting to show up in my local pond, giving the water a murky quality that indicates microscopic life thriving in the warm, nutrient-rich [...]
Named for the color the microorganisms give seawater when stimulated by sunlight, red tides are common seasonal phenomena in coastal waters. “There are many different types of red tides depending on where you are in the world and many different types of impacts depending on the organism that cause the problems,” said Don Anderson, a [...]
Dredging channels and cleaning boat hulls or fishing gear in or near established Didemnum colonies can create fragments of these invasive organisms that survive in the water column up to four weeks, disperse long distances, and even reproduce before resettling, possibly in new areas, according to NOAA research. The article suggests that cleaning equipment on land and reducing bottom disturbance [...]