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Toxic Algae Threatens Florida's Gulf Coast
As reported by Discovery News, After Toledo had to temporarily ban residents from using tap water last weekend because of a toxic algae bloom on Lake Erie, you probably figured that we’d filled the quota of bad algae-related news for the summer. No such luck, unfortunately. Off the Gulf Coast of Florida, the biggest red tide bloom seen in Florida in nearly a decade already has killed thousands of fish. The bloom, which contains the microorganism Karenia brevis,
may pose a public health threat to Floridians if it washes ashore, which is expected to happen in the next two weeks, according to Reuters.
NBC News says this is the largest such bloom seen since 2006 — approximately 50 x 80 miles.
Unlikely. Fertilizer runoff from farms being dumped in a body of water will help algae growth, that's a very large part of what happened in Ohio, because apparently farmers in Ohio are fucking retards who think dumping manure on fields that are FROZEN OVER is a good idea and that it won't just all wash out into the lake there.
Petroleum isn't going to have the same effect by a long shot. There is no algae that eats oil.
nope....Gators come to Tuscaloosa next month.
And those are just the Yankee fans from Queens.
The smell from this can be horrendous and is bad for tourism. Several counties on the West coast of Florida have issued restrictions on the use of fertilizers. The fertilizers used on lawns is blamed for the red tide outbreaks by feeding the organisms, it is believed. The effect on the environment can be harmful in depleting and causing population loss of fish and other species. A large portion of the runoff of fertilizer is from entirely ornamental landscape applications, a complete waste of resources, especially considering the issue of Phosphate depletion. I would like to see a broad restrictions on such fertilizers except for production of food crops. That some people would waste the resource nd threaten the ecosystem, for the vanity of a perfect green yard is outrageous. In Florida, they often use grass species which are pretty much impossible to keep going without these massive applications, such as St. Augustine. When you stop throwing the chemicals on the yard, the St. Augustine will mostly go away.
St. Albans Bay and Missisquoi Bay on Lake Champlain are on high alert for blue green algae blooms and associated cyanobacteria.
Communities up and down Lake Champlain in New York and Vermont have been dealing with this for years.
Let's not forget phosphate mines, or leaks: e.g., Piney Point, Jeb Bush & Friends
http://www.thebradentontimes.com/news/2011/06/22/environment/piney_point_1966_2011_a_retrospective/#.U-gRnviGTgA
http://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/huge-red-tide-algae-bloom-could-move-ashore-florida-n175506
Red Tide, which happens in other coastal areas as well, is a phenomenon that's been occurring for centuries.
Undoubtedly, there are anthropogenic influences on this and every facet of the environment. Rightfully so, restrictions on fertilizer use are already in place, or pending in, affected areas.
Though it is inconvenient and unprofitable in the short term, the collective conscience of the governed requires the governors to care about and remedy shit like this.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
And when it is a red tide... red tinged algal bloom... it is almost always very harmful and contaminates all the shell fish in the affected area making them toxic to humans... highly toxic. And the effect can last for years. Being sea water people are not likely to drink it, so that is one difference from Ohio.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Fertilizer is among its many byproducts, but raw petroleum is not going to work as fertilizer and requires quite a bit of processing in order to split into the products that we use today.
This has been an ongoing problem, periodically, if you'll recall. And the use of fertilizers is only increasing. The oil spill didn't contribute, it's causing its own problems but this is not one of them.
It goes to scale.
The one that measures influence.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
I don't get artificial turf as a "green" alternative. If you just stop applying chemicals, and keep applying water you still have a lawn. It's just not a monoculture lawn. One place I lived in my college years did this out of sheer laziness, not a desire to be "green". This was in Virginia. Result? A lawn with some residual turf grass, but visually dominated by flowering clover, dandelion, some purple flowers I never learned the name of the whole time I grew up there, and a smattering of less common wildflowers. That was what survived the occasional mowing to about six inches. It was absolutely beautiful and when my Dad come down one weekend I told him that. He said what you'd expect from any post-war suburban parent: "Weeds".
Sheesh. I never did get that. Dandelion is actually useful. It's edible for cryin' out loud. Clover fixed nitrogen. Turf grass? I'm hard pressed to think of a use.
Anyway, I digress. I don't get the whole idea of covering the grass with a petroleum product. Just stop applying chemicals, keep watering if there's not a drought, and mow to six inches. Let nature take it's course, and explain be the change you want to see--owner of diverse, healthy lawns.
There is no algae that eats oil.
Maybe no algae, but plenty of bacteria do.
Anyway, don't discount the number of farmers in Canada who've done the same thing with manure, and screw up the lakes too. There was a farmer upstream of Pittock Dam, who used to do the same thing. Took the ministry of environment(MoE) in Ontario nearly 25 years to "get around" to finally fine the dumb bastard. Or as many people put it, "the dumb french bastard." Since dumping manure on frozen ground is very common in Quebec as well.
Om, nomnomnom...
The trick is to *plant* weeds, preferably wild local plants that won't be invasive and are pleasant and well-adapted to the climate. Repeatedly massacre anything that put out thorns or such, and in a year or two you'll have such a nice dense mat of well-established and non-noxious wild growth that the unpleasant stuff will be hard pressed to sneak in. Essentially you're cultivating a lawn that can out-compete noxious weeds with little or no help from you.
Of course the drought thing can still do a number - between the beaver and the buffalo we massacred the most important animals on the continent for retaining surface ground water (the one built temporary ponds and channels that stored and distributed water and rich sediment, while the other churned standing grasses into the soil so they could break down and maintain a healthy, water-retaining loam rather than remaining on the surface and slowly oxidizing away.)
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Should also mention - greywater use is *extremely* effective in desert areas, especially if you're cultivating native plants that can survive the drought to begin with. Even just catching the gallon or so of water you run to let your shower warm up and tossing it on the lawn every day can make the difference between plants struggling to survive and flourishing. And if you have a bathtub, then using a submersible pump to transfer the dirty water to your garden/lawn instead of sending it down the drain will make your yard the envy of the neighborhood.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
> I don't know why the current 'front lawn culture' is a thing.
My guess - uselessness as an expression of wealth. Look at pretty much *any* of the trappings of wealth, virtually all of them are not just useless, but *intentionally* useless. Once upon a time it was silver swords and petticoats that took hours to don. And lawns - through their very existence you are stating "I have sufficient wealth to not only maintain a swath of fertile land growing a non-aggressive plant only good for walking on, but also systematically exterminate the endless onslaught of much-more-viable plants trying to get established". At one time it was only the nobility with their sweeping estates who could afford such a luxury, but now you too can have your very own tiny fragment of an estate and validate your self-worth as a modern American micro-noble.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
There's no ice in Queensland, the prevailing ocean currents go south and are replenished by clean water from the coal sea. However fertilizer runoff has been the barrier reef's #1 enemy for decades. We don't get red-tides so much but the runoff triggers the regular crown of thorns plagues whose larvae eat the algae, then as adults eat the coral. The plagues can and do occur naturally, usually after floods from cyclones. The fertilizer both amplifies and increases the frequency of the plagues to the point were the reef does not have enough time between plagues to fully recover.
The reef's in the Caribbean and mediterranean were already heavily damaged when Jack Cousteau was swimming around taking notes in the 60's. Since then Science has discovered that a healthy reef actually has the majority of its biomass stored in large fish such as sharks, a severely degraded reef has the majority of its biomass stored in small fast growing invertebrates and weeds. The only reason the filthy Ganges river has not destroyed the Seychelles and other pristine reefs nearby is that it's mouth is clogged with thousands of acres of mangroves that act as a natural (and extremely efficient) water filter.
Nearly all marine biologists will tell you the answer to the serious problem of collapsing fisheries is to set aside marine parks in specific locations that would cover approximately 5% of the world's coastline and some specific deep sea ridges, virtually everyone else will say there's "plenty of fish in the sea".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Aussie turf grass (mainly cooch) good at stopping sandy soil from eroding and is kind to bare feet (but may contain funnel web spiders). The worst weed to have in an aussie lawn is the bindi, it has a large seed that no matter which way it lands has a thorn pointing upwards. Still, most (not all) people here in Oz fall into the "lazy" camp, we just mow whatever grows and maybe throw a box of seed mix around after a severe drought has turned it to dust. During a drought there are severe restrictions on water use for everyone with harsh penalties for breaking them, watering lawns (if permitted) is 2hr window on two or three days a week, sprinklers are generally banned. We aussies really do take water rationing very seriously during a drought, people or companies who flaunt the heavily advertised water rationing rules are about as popular with the general public as arsonists and pedophiles. All but the most dedicated gardeners see their laws disappear in the first or second February.
:)
:). Happily the road people seem to have also noticed the daisies since the drought broke and now appear to time their spring mowing so as to be just the right height when the 6-8 inch tall daisies flower (roughly a 2 week window in early spring). Makes the freeway commute feel like a spring meadow and doesn't cost them a cent.
Having said that, wild grass is incredibly resilient, my house is near the beach, during the last major drought the yard was bare sand for several years, the lemon tree died in the second of five of our driest summers on record, the handful of native bushes and trees I have took it in their stride, two weeks of good rain in mid autumn then BOOM a carpet of green shoots across the entire yard, not an ounce of fertilizer, not a single seed sown. The easiest way to thicken it up after a drought is as you say cut high and often but also leave the catcher off the mower, this holds in the moisture, allows more species to reseed themselves, and gives pollinators a better chance of surviving the mower.
Flowers are not the only interesting feature of a wild lawn, we have a local grass that puts up a fast growing stem like a dandelion and at roughly the same time as dandelions are turning to seed. A narrow seed pod forms on top of the steam and when ripe explodes shooting hundreds of pinhead sized seeds waist high.
Disclaimer: I am an average (Aussie) post-war suburban grandparent
When there's enough rain to have a lawn I pay someone $50 to mow it and trim the edges every 3-5 weeks depending on the season, he does a great job. I am however a little odd (ok very odd) in that I don't mow it in early spring because it is covered in weeds (wild daisies) or late summer ( dandelions and grandpa's exploding grass
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
There is no algae that eats oil.
It's unfortunate, mostly for you, that you cannot imagine second-order effects. For example, what if the oil (or dispersant) is killing off something which normally retards the algae? Farmers, landscapers, and homeowners use too much fertilizer every year, but there isn't a toxic bloom of this scope every year.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
These red tide problems have been going on for decades, long before the oil spill. The oil spill has been devastating but I dont think its causing this.
To the best of my knowledge, there have been red tides there since before the Spaniards hit the beaches.
The question here, as in so many other cases, isn't whether it's something new, but whether people have been doing things that make it more intense and/or more frequent.
And since it's not a simply provable binary condition, people will argue about it.