Thanks Rich. Good stuff. Or bad 🙂

with love, artie

Nitrogen tends to be the limiting nutrient for marine algae growth (as opposed to phosphorus in freshwater systems) . Red tides are caused by an algae group called dinoflagellates that when they bloom create a range of toxins which will bioaccumlate within foodchains. For example, red tides cause a range of shellfish poisoning i.e they don’t kill or cause death of shellfish but the animals that consume them. Where you have dense algal blooms over a wide area, localised algae population collapse will occur due to factors such as nutrient exhaustion. The collapse can be catastrophic on local water quality due to microbial decomposition processes. This will cause not only sudden loss of dissolved oxygen but will also elevate the concentration of other potentially toxic decomposition products such as ammonia.

Global warming will raise sea temperature and increase algal reproduction rates but the key driver is nutrients from waste water and agricultural run off to rivers and the sea. We have to start being smart and stop thinking of the sea as an infinite dumping ground.

Cheers

Rich – not the one above 😉