Latest news with #algalbloom
ABC News
3 days ago
- Health
- ABC News
Hopes high after ocean temperatures off SA coast drop amid algal bloom outbreak
Ocean temperatures off South Australia's coast have dropped following storms this week, sparking hopes the toxic algal bloom will soon end. Offshore buoys looked after by Flinders University, which measure sea surface temperature, show it has dipped below 16 degrees Celsius at Robe for the first time in about two months. Ocean temperatures have also dropped near Adelaide and Victor Harbor. A buoy at West Beach recorded sea surface temperatures of 15.38C yesterday after reaching 16.56C on Sunday. A buoy at Victor Harbor saw a drop from 17.28C on Sunday to 16.56 yesterday. It follows a marine heatwave which saw ocean temperatures 2.5C warmer than usual, which led to an algal bloom outbreak spanning thousands of kilometres. Flinders University coastal studies professor Patrick Hesp said the drop was a glimmer of good news amid the bad weather which saw thousands without power, jetties damaged and coastal erosion. "We've seen quite significant erosion, but perhaps one of the positive effects is that there would be a significant amount of mixing because of those big waves," Professor Hesp said. In March, surfers reported sore eyes, coughing and blurry vision after visiting beaches west of Victor Harbor and since then marine life has been found dead along the eastern Yorke Peninsula, the Fleurieu Peninsula and Kangaroo Island. The Environment Protection Authority (EPA) and the Department of Primary Industries and Regions South Australia (PIRSA) identified the cause of the irritation and deaths as Karenia mikimotoi, a toxic microalgal bloom. PIRSA said water testing results to check whether the bloom had dissipated would be available early next week. Marine biologist and UTS researcher Shauna Murray, who helped authorities identify the bloom in March, said storms could be a circuit breaker. "Normally with strong weather conditions you would expect to see dissipation and things are being pushed out," she said. However, she said it was difficult to predict what would happen with this bloom because of its size. "It's complicated because it's a large bloom over a very big area," she said. "It's hard to know to what extent it's now seeding itself and it's continuing to grow, and to what extent it's just being dispersed into certain areas." Faith Coleman, an ecologist who has been testing water samples, said the weather would have flushed out waters — but the extent was not yet clear. "It may have happened totally or it may have happened partially," she said. "If it's only happened partially we may end up with bloom occurring, if we have sunny days after this, in places that [it hadn't]." Wild weather was experienced throughout South Australia earlier in the week with waves up to 5.6 metres recorded by a buoy off Robe on Monday night, along with similar heights north of Kangaroo Island and slightly smaller swell offshore of Victor Harbor. The strongest wind gust was 126 kilometres per hour, recorded at Neptune Island. Roanna Horbelt, who runs Research and Discovery Coastal Tours, Kangaroo Island, took TAFE students out on the sea off Emu Bay on Wednesday. After previously reporting dead fish and stingrays in the area, Ms Horbelt said the group was "very pleasantly surprised". "There's still particles in the water for sure, but I mean hardly any foam at all and the amount of birdlife and other life that we're seeing around there are looking a lot happier." The group saw a large pod of dolphins, along with hundreds of birds and seals. Dolphins that had previously disappeared in cloudy water just 1.5 metres deep were now clearly visible. "Yesterday, they seemed to be very joyful and back to normal and followed our boat for almost 20 minutes just riding the bow along the coastline, so we had about 80 of them doing that, so that was pretty special," Ms Horbelt said. "Everything seemed almost back to normal, fingers-crossed." Citizen scientist and aquatic instructor Lochie Cameron is one of the organisers of a forum on the effects of the algal bloom that is being held in Marion Bay, on the Yorke Peninsula, on Sunday. He believed the algal bloom would have a long-lasting impact. "I feel a bit grim about it," he said. "I think we're looking at a couple of decades-long recovery for these areas. "A lot of the species that have been impacted are long-lived species that take quite a long time to mature, so, yeah, I do hold quite a large concern for our sea dragons and boarfish and other benthic species as well."
ABC News
6 days ago
- ABC News
Communities impacted by SA's algae bloom take stock of destruction
South Australia's unprecedented algal bloom has brought death and destruction to the state's marine environment and impacted its tourism and fishing industries. The crisis has forged new connections among coastal communities that are waiting to see if the long-awaited arrival of stormy weather and cold temperatures will break up the algal bloom that was first reported in March. A group of surfers, divers, residents and Indigenous elders walked along some of the south coast's wild surf beaches at Victor Harbor on Saturday. They talked about what they had seen over the past few months. Ramindjeri and Naruunga elders Cedric Varcoe and Angelena Harradine Buckskin created and helped to organise the event with local environmental group The Wild South. They welcomed the groups of walkers as they made their way from Victor Harbor to Goolwa. Mr Varcoe said it was important for people to yarn about the effects of the lingering algae and rising water temperatures. "The main concern is the amount of our sea creatures washing up; we call them our Ngaitye because they're part of our Dreaming, part of our culture as Ramindjeri people," he said. Mr Varcoe and Aunty Angelena said the message behind the event was about healing the waters. They were pleased it had brought together people from all walks of life. Ron and Stefi Phillips, who took part in the walk, were relatively new to the community of Victor Harbor. But Mr Phillips has dived off the coast of South Australia for many years. He said he dived a local reef just days before the first impacts of the bloom were seen in March, watching and observing some of the fish and other marine life present. "A week later I could see some of them lying on the beach, which is a bit sad," he said. "We were coughing and one particular day … we were walking along and there were quite a few dead creatures and the next day I still had a burning throat," Mrs Phillips said. The couple attended a community forum in Middleton in April to find out more about the karenia mikimotoi algal bloom. Since then they have become part of the movement of citizen scientists who upload pictures of what they find on the local beaches to the iNaturalist citizen scientist database. Some walkers carried a message stick as they journeyed. It will be decorated and then taken to Naruunga Country for another Walk for Water event, to be held at Marion Bay on June 7. Surfer Scott Murdoch was entrusted with the message stick for the first part of the walk. He said he spent a lot of time on the south coast and loved the landscape. Mr Murdoch said he felt sick after being exposed to the bloom and watched with dismay its impact on wildlife. "I just wanted to show that it's important to protect these places," he said. Adelaide violin teacher Freya Davies-Ardill, who grew up in Goolwa, was one of volunteers who helped make the event happen. She was busy organising food and entertainment at the halfway mark and joined the walk for the final leg from Ratalang at Port Elliot to Goolwa. Ms Davies-Ardill said she hoped the events would send a message to the South Australian government about the importance of directing funds into research and on-the-ground efforts to document the extent of the damage to the coastal and marine environment.
ABC News
24-05-2025
- Climate
- ABC News
The algal bloom harming marine life is now hitting livelihoods
The shallows that follow the shoreline might not seem the likeliest setting for the contemplation of drought. But along those stretches of South Australian coast that are currently awash with the remains of sea creatures, lack of rain is very much part of the problem. It has exacerbated an algal bloom that is choking the ocean. Downpours, storms and strong winds would help to disperse the algae. Without them, the bloom will fester. "Initially the experts were talking like a few days and this would be gone, but that was a month ago," said Kangaroo Island tour boat operator Andrew Neighbour. While the bloom's devastating impact on marine life is, slowly but steadily, being investigated and documented, its impact on human lives and livelihoods has attracted less attention. But that could be about to change, especially if businesses like Mr Neighbour's start to feel the effects. "We're getting a lot of people cancelling, and I guess that's going to be right through the whole tourism sector as well, and in the seafood industry," he said. "I've got some mates who are line fishermen locally here, professional fishermen. When the ABC spoke to Kangaroo Island fisher Robert Barrett earlier this month, it had been nine days since he had made a commercial catch. "The last four or five times out, I have not caught a fish," he said. "Originally when it started, none of us knew what was going on, the water was a little bit discoloured, and we were hearing stories of an algal bloom. "The trouble is we just don't know the impact of this bloom — how long it's going to last, [and] how the fish will recover when it does eventually clear when the weather systems come through." Mr Barrett has been a commercial fisherman for 40 years, and mainly chases whiting. He uses razorfish for berley — and it was while he was inspecting the razorfish beds that he first realised that something was seriously wrong. "The razorfish were alive one day and then, within two days, we lost those beds. They just died," he said. Recreational fishers tell similar stories. "The amount of fish and shellfish I've seen dead, dying and sick is amazing and scary at the same time," RecFish SA's Kangaroo Island director Gavin Mathews said. Mr Mathews has been "living and working and fishing" on the island for more than two decades, but has never before "seen a fish kill like this". "I personally believe there will be some long-term consequences of what's happening," he said. For Mr Barrett, the crystal ball is about as cloudy as the waters. "If the food source on the spit and the surrounding waters has gone, has died, the fish won't come back in. They need food to survive," he said. "That's what I'm terrified about. Just over five years ago, Kangaroo Island was in the grip of a disaster of a very different kind. As the infernos of the Black Summer bushfire season ravaged the island, and reduced swathes of its vegetation to ash, consolation came in the form of public support. "The great thing about the island when it was impacted by the bushfires is the support we got from Australia, from worldwide," Mr Barrett recalled. "It was just amazing, it just made you feel proud to be an Australian, the support this island received." The current catastrophe is still very much unfolding, but its scale has previously prompted comparisons with the size of the island itself. Mr Barrett said there had not yet been any indication of financial assistance from the state government or the Department of Primary Industries and Regions (PIRSA). "PIRSA, I should imagine, are like us — they just don't know where it's headed or the impacts it will have on the industry," he said. South Australia's oyster industry is in a slightly different boat, and its growers association says that farms in key regions have not been affected. "The vast majority of oysters are produced in [Spencer] Gulf and around on our West Coast … from Coffins all the way out to Denial Bay," chairman Peter Treloar told the ABC's Country Hour. "They are not impacted by this algae and are open for business at the moment. "They are busy harvesting and selling." In Gulf St Vincent, however, the situation is different. "The farms on Yorke Peninsula are closed for sales at the moment — it's purely a precautionary measure," Mr Treloar said. "It's never fun to have a harvest area closed and of course it impacts cash flows for individual growers." In a recent post on Facebook, Port Vincent Oysters declared: "Mother Nature has caught up with us". "Sadly our harvesting area has been closed and we are unable to sell to the public until further notice," the post stated. On Thursday, South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas was asked about the possibility of financial support from the state government. "As yet, we're not at that point," he replied. "As a government, we've got over $70 million that we've invested in drought assistance at the moment and that's rolling out pretty well. "The developments around the oyster industry are very recent and discrete, but we will monitor it as time goes on." Mr Malinauskas said the challenges of the bloom were very different from those posed by the Black Summer fires. "With bushfires, for instance, we have the CFS: 10,000-strong-plus volunteers, hundreds of millions of dollars invested in equipment to go out there and fight the fires," he said. On Kangaroo Island, the fear remains that conditions will deteriorate before they improve. "There needs to be more awareness of what's going on," Andrew Neighbour said. Mr Neighbour made that comment while overlooking waters that usually teem with fish and with fishers. "At one of the busiest boat ramps on Kangaroo Island, there's not a single boat here, apart from us," he said. "That's a fair sign of how serious it is."
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Fisherman's alarming sighting in popular marina as crisis worsens: 'Never seen it before'
An unexpected visitor to a popular marina in South Australia has created a stir, with local fishermen saying they've never seen anything like it. A juvenile great white was spotted cruising the shallows of Wirrina Cove, leading some to wonder if the state's algal bloom crisis is behind the predator's behaviour. Jarrod Glaister, owner and skipper of Southern Fishing Charters, told Yahoo News he initially thought the animal was a dolphin and was shocked to see a great white in the marina. 'I've never seen it before,' he said. While doing maintenance on his boat Jarrod spotted the shark alongside the vessel, and could still see it swimming around hours later. "He's still kicking around, he's stuck in the marina," Jarrod said. "He's just swimming around." While the shark had attracted the attention of a couple of onlookers, Jarrod predicted it wouldn't be long before word spread and more people came to the marina for a look. The toxic algal bloom is suffocating marine life off the South Australian coast, killing more than 200 aquatic species, including protected sea dragons and sharks. A mob of kangaroos were also euthanised after eating toxic grass near the algal bloom. In April, a great white shark was rescued from a sandbar near Tiddy Widdy Beach, while in May another great white couldn't be saved after washing up at Henley Beach. The Fleurieu Peninsula, which includes Wirrina Cove, has been largely impacted by the algae explosion. Professor Culum Brown, behavioural ecologist at Macquarie University, said the region has a healthy shark population and it's not uncommon for juvenile white sharks to be spotted close to shore. "I have no doubt white sharks swim by marinas from time to time. There is no reason why they wouldn't be there," Prof Brown told Yahoo News. He added the shark looked "disorientated", and couldn't rule out the algae bloom as the cause. "That whole area is having an issue with raised water temps and high plankton counts so it might be related, but who can really say," he said. "Algal blooms are problematic for two main reasons: 1) they can be toxic in their own right, and 2) they can starve the water of oxygen. "If you combine that with high water temperatures, where O2 levels are already lower, then you have a problem." Experts have described the scenes, which began in early March, as a "horror movie for fish". With barely any rain or wind forecast across the region over the next week, the algae bloom is only expected to worsen. Do you have a story tip? Email: newsroomau@ You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube.
Yahoo
18-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
31 million tons of supercharged seaweed is creeping toward beaches in Florida and around the Caribbean
The Atlantic Ocean has a toxic seaweed problem. Floating in brown islands of algae, this year's sargassum bloom has already broken its own size record by millions of tons — and the growing season isn't done yet. Now stretching across some 5,500 miles of ocean, the annual bloom is more than just an eyesore: Sargassum hurts ecosystems and economies wherever its overgrown arms reach. And they are spreading into Florida's waterways, coating marinas and beaches in the Miami area. 'Sargassum goes from being a very beneficial resource of the North Atlantic to becoming what we refer to as … a harmful algal bloom, when it comes ashore in excessive biomass,' said Brian LaPointe, a research professor at Florida Atlantic University's Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute. 'What we have seen since 2011 are excessive inundation events all around the Caribbean region, the Gulf, as well as the South Florida region,' explained LaPointe, who has studied the seaweed for decades. For more than a decade, Atlantic coastal communities have been inundated by more and more sargassum. Images of white sand beaches stretching into azure waters have been altered by the toxic and putrid invasion. In the water, it's home to larvae and other organisms that can irritate the skin of any passing swimmers. As it rots on shore, it emits harmful gases— an infamous stench. It's a blight on beaches that repels tourists during the high-travel season, ultimately hurting towns that rely on tourism to fuel their economy. Rising ocean temperatures due to human-caused climate change have spurred this sargassum surplus, supercharging the seaweed. In April, the University of South Florida estimated this year's bloom is already at 31 million tons — '40% more' than the previous record from June 2022, according to LaPointe. The sargassum bloom itself is not a new phenomenon. It's long provided a home to species from sea turtles to fish as winds and tides push it from the coast of West Africa toward Brazil, up into the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico. 'Sargassum has been around for eons. Colombus ran into it right in the Sargasso Sea,' La Pointe told CNN. 'But what we are seeing now is above and beyond what we had historically.' Sargassum's growth is also being driven by an excess of nitrogen in the water, LaPointe said — and that's a key factor behind this year's monster bloom. Some nitrogen may be coming from the atmosphere, carried in the air from the burning of fossil fuels or dust from the Sahara Desert. But there's one major source: agricultural fertilizers. Used in the American heartland as well as in the Amazon basin where there's been rapid deforestation for farming, the nitrogen-rich fertilizers are likely making their way into the Mississippi and Amazon Rivers as runoff, which then carries it into the Atlantic. And the Amazon basin has notched its lowest water levels on record amid two straight years of extreme drought — the worst since records began being kept in 1950. 'What happens when you have a severe drought in the world's largest watershed? You get all this organic matter that dries up. Plants dry up and die. And then, when the rain hits, what happens? All those nutrients wash out,' LaPointe hypothesized, adding that 'first flush' events like this are full of concentrations of nitrogen and phosphorus at peak levels, which go on to feed the bloom's growth explosion. Unsurprisingly, the constant inundation of stinky, brown seaweed along the coast is not good for economies driven by tourism. This year's bloom has already been making an appearance along Florida's east coast, from the Keys to Saint Augustine, according to reports on a sargassum monitoring site, and southeastern Florida could see more in the coming weeks. The unwanted algae has also been spotted in popular destinations from Mexico to Barbados and farther south. 'It's not good for the environment, because what you're smelling is hydrogen sulfide gas which is toxic,' LaPointe said. In some places, the beaches are cleared of seaweed from sunrise to sunset — an expensive endeavor combing up sargassum that inundates the coastline with every wave. Some of the machinery used to clean the beaches adds its own pollution to the scenic environment, too. 'Resorts have gone out to their beaches with heavy equipment like front-end loaders, bulldozers, dump trucks to try to remove the sargassum to make those beaches available,' LaPointe said, as tourists don't want mounds of sargassum to mar their tropical views. 'The tourists check out, and they don't come back.' This is a major tangle for places like Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula, which exists in the heart of the sargassum belt between the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. The problem has become so pronounced along the Riviera Maya, Mara Lezama, the governor of Quintana Roo, a state in the peninsula, has taken to social media to say her state is working with the Mexican Navy to collect the seaweed in the water while also installing a nearly 6-mile barrier in the water to protect Quintana Roo's Mahahual, Playa del Carmen and Puerto Morelos beaches. The barriers, which are similar to booms that contain oil spills, are just over a yard deep and are designed to keep the seaweed from reaching the coast. As it approaches, the decaying sargassum can also create health problems for animals and humans. 'When it arrives to the coastal area, it creates a shadow from the sun, so everything that is below — all the life is not getting sunlight. So, it starts to affect the ecosystem, coastal ecosystem, and many things die,' said Christian Appendini, professor at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. 'Then when it gets over the beach, it starts to decompose. And when it decomposes, it releases all the contaminants it has.' Ammonia is another problem emitted by the decaying seaweed, LaPointe noted. The chemical compound 'strips the oxygen out of the waters along our coastal ecosystems like mangroves, coral reefs, seagrass beds,' he said. 'When you see the mass inundation events along the beaches, say in the Mexican Riviera, for example, you don't see many fish or crabs,' LaPointe continued. 'If you do, they're probably dead because there's no oxygen in that water.' With sargassum cementing itself as an ongoing problem, some are looking into putting the seaweed to good use, instead. Appendini says research is ongoing to find ways to use the sargassum for biofuel, building bricks, or as membranes for cleaning water, since it is particularly absorbent. 'They absorb all the heavy metals and contaminants in the water,' he told CNN. 'That's also why sargassum can be very toxic, because when it's drifting in the ocean it's just assimilating all the toxic elements in the ocean like cadmium, arsenic and other minerals and elements.' There's also the possibility of carbon sequestration by sinking the excessive biomass to the bottom of the ocean. And there's interest in possibly using sargassum to replace one of the globe's other problems: plastic. 'If we could harvest this sargassum and produce this biodegradable product that could replace single use plastics, that would begin to restore the oceans regarding the serious plastic pollution that we're seeing,' LaPointe said. As the sargassum situation remains pervasive for more than a decade now, Appendini said the record-breaking bloom should make the world pay attention. 'I think the sargassum blooms are like a warning that we need to be more mindful of how we are developing in this world,' Appendini said. 'We need to change … how we do things.' CNN's Norma Galeana contributed to this story.
