Toxic Algae bloom
Name: Faisal Hussain
Student number: 500635004
Course code: ENH 617
Institution: Ryerson University
Submission Date: 16th November 2015
Word Count: 537
Toxic Algae bloom
Freshwater and marine destructive algal blooms also called harmful algal bloom or HABs, can transpire anytime, and use of water is impaired due to the accumulation of excessive harmful algae. HAB instance is influenced by an intricate set of chemical, physical, hydrological, biological, and meteorological circumstances making it hard to isolate certain causative environmental factors (Graham, 2015). Possible damages include accumulation of malodorous scums around the beach, reduction in quality of water, algal emission of toxins that are
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The nature of American HABs challenge has changed significantly over the last decades in both freshwater and marine. While thirty years ago the menace was sporadic and scattered, currently, every state is virtually threatened by toxic or harmful algal species (Jinhui, 2005). The amount of harmful blooms, the kinds of affected resources, the economic loss because of them, and the amount of toxins they produce increased melodramatically in the past years in America.
There are numerous reasons behind the spreading and expansion of HABs globally. The organisms behind HABs have been in existence on earth for a longer duration than expected. Thus, new bloom occurrence simply reflect improved detection techniques and increased observers instead of introduction of species or dispersal events. Another aspect contributing to the increase in HABs detection is the melodramatic rise in aquaculture activities over the past few epochs, which prompted for increased product quality monitoring and safety and subsequently exposed indigenous harmful algae that probably
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The dead zones in turn affect the life of aquatic organisms. They cannot survive in the dead zones and hence they have to migrate to areas where they can get better oxygen and better food and other materials necessary for survival. The migration of aquatic organisms results into scrambling of resources, which in turn end up in shortages. The HABs also make the aquatic environment to be uncomfortable for the aquatic organisms to survive and undergo their normal life cycle (Kinkaid, 2014).
HABs also produce extremely harmful toxins that can even kill human beings and animals. The existence of HAB results in rise of treatment costs for drinking water. The water companies have to spend many resources in ensuring the water consumed is clean and cannot harm an individual. HABs also hurt industries like fisheries, tourism and other industries that depend on clean water.
In order to protect human health, relevant agencies are supposed to control the harvesting of the shellfish. Human activities that result in water pollution should be controlled and the society given enough sensitization on the need to control pollution (Jinhui, 2005). The governments of affected countries and global agencies should also establish routine monitoring programs and initiate more research studies on measures to control
Nitrogen and nitrates relate to Hypoxia via the process of eutrophication. Since Nitrogen is a limiting nutrient in most waters, the added input of nitrate causes massive growth in algae. The algae rapidly consume all available N, and once the nutrient is limited again, the alga dies en masse. As the alga decomposes, oxygen is depleted in the water. This lowers dangerously lowers the level of dissolved oxygen in the water, which harms living organisms in the area. Small organisms and organisms that are immobile or unable to escape low-oxygen areas are particularly vulnerable. Hypoxia and resulting “dead zones” are harmful to local fishing and shrimping industries and algal blooms hurt the tourism industry. Hypoxia has lead to a decrease of about 25% in the brown shrimp habitat, forcing shrimping operations further offshore. As the hypoxia issue continues to grow, negative human effects will only increase. Since nitrate runoff from ag. has been proven to be the dominant source of hypoxia, policies could be enacted to effectively deal with “point-source” pollution. This makes enacting environmental policy more easily adapted, possibly included in past policy such as the Clean Water Act.
The Chesapeake Bay is the nation’s largest estuary with six major tributaries, the James, the Potomac, the Susquehanna, the Patuxent, the York, and the Rappahannock Rivers, feeding into the bay from various locations in Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and the District of Columbia (Chemical Contaminants in the Chesapeake Bay – Workshop Discussion 1). These areas depend on the Bay as both an environmental and an economic resource. Throughout the last 15 years the Chesapeake Bay has suffered from elevated levels of pollution. Nitrogen and phosphorous from wastewater treatment plants, farmland, air pollution, and development all lead to reduced water clarity and lowered oxygen levels, which harm fish, crabs, oysters and underwater grasses (Key Commission Issues 1). There are other types of pollution in the bay such as toxic chemicals, but because nutrient pollution is the most significant and most widespread in the Bay its effects are the most harmful to fisheries. Nitrogen and phosphorous fuel algal blooms which cloud the water and block sunlight from reaching underwater grass beds that provide food and habitat for waterfowl, juvenile fish, blue crabs, and other species (Blankenship 11-12). Algae plays a vital role in the food chain by providing food for small fish and oysters. However, when there is an overabundance of algae it dies, sinks to the bottom of the Bay, and decomposes in such a manner that depletes the oxygen levels of the Bay (11). The reduced oxygen levels in the Bay reduce the carrying capacity of the environment and these “dead areas” sometimes kill off species that can not migrate to other areas of the Bay, such as oysters (11). Increased abundance of algal blooms also led to the overabundance of harmful and toxic algae species and microbes such as the microbe Pfiesteria, which was responsible in 1997 for eating fish alive and making dozens of people sick (12). The heightened awareness of diseases that can be contracted through consumption of contaminated fish also has an economic impact. Therefore, the excess levels of nitrogen and phosphorous have fueled an overabundance of algal blooms, which has reduced water clarity and lowered oxygen levels, affecting many species within the bay and ultimately the industries that rely on these species.
The Chesapeake Bay plays host to an astonishing amount of plant and animal life, providing much of our fish intake for species that aren’t being overfished. For the species that are being overdrawn, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation is working to restore the populations, and it’s going well thus far. Another theme that is endangering the marine life populations as well as the health of the human population is the massive amount of polluti...
Ocean Pollution is a serious issue in today's global politics. The delicate balance of Earth's ecosystem is put in jeopardy when the ocean is not clean. Problem evolving from ocean pollution directly harm marine life and indirectly affect human health and the Earth's many valuable resources. Ocean Pollution is a Broad term that encpompasses any and all foregin matter that directly or indirectly makes its way into the ocean. This includes everything from the extreme: oil spills, Toxic Waste dumping and industrial dumping-- to the small scael: human activities and basic carelessness. Because the oceans and all other water bodies are invariably, somehow connected, and because they account for 3/4 of the Earth's surface, they are an ideal method of transportation for pollution, allowing the rapid spread of seemingly far away toxins into a river near you! It is increasingly important that we educate ourselves as to what, exactly, ocean pollution is, so that we can identify the causes at their source and take action in small and large ways, and hopefully, prevent this terrible form of pollution from getting any worse than it is today.
The Chesapeake Bay has faced an excessive amount of pollution over the past century. The water in the bay has become so highly polluted that It is capable of causing harm to humans coming in direct contact with the water. Although algae serves a vital role in the bay’s ecosystem, it also creates a problem that is causing a large amount of the problem.
The affected area is not only a very important ecological region, supporting coral reefs and many species of sharks and birds, but it also supports the crucial fishing industry.
Many of the methods used in commercial fishing are very destructive to the aquatic systems. Industrial ocean trawlers scrape the bottom of the water, often dragging up the seafloor with them. This destroys the habitat and kills many of the bottom dwelling organisms that are vulnerable to these practices. There is also a large amount of marine animals that are unintentionally caught by the large nets. These animals are considered bycatch, having no value to fishermen and are usually killed. These large fishing vessels also add a significant amount of pollution to the water. Fishing vessels cause oil spills as well as discharging chemical elements and wastes into the water. The thousands of of trawlers that pass through Japanese waters create large quantities of water pollution that can devastate aquatic life by changing the chemical composition of the water and affecting all the organisms that inhabit these
Most damage to the reef has occurred in the last fifty years. It coincided almost exactly with an increase in land clearing (source 11) and the disappearance of wet lands (source 1) for coastal development followed by population growth (source 7) and farming (source 11). These disturbances to the environment damage natural habitats and loosened the sediment causing it to be washed into the ocean. The pollutants and pesticides from farming together with a sharp increase in the use of synthetic nitrogen in fertilizers (source 8) in the last fifty years sped up inland pollution. The pollutants bind with the sediments creating a sticky mud that covers the coral algae called zooxanthellae killing the coral. Pollutants and sediments also create a hazy cloud in the water blocking out sunlight and preventing photosynthesis. (source 12) Apart from this there is also an increase in marine based pollution such as ship wrecks (source 3) h...
Coral reef bleaching refers to the phenomenon in which corals become so stressed by changes in conditions that they expel the symbiotic algae living within their tissues (Glynn, 1996). At the moment that corals encounter stressors (which are both natural and anthropogenic), they react by rejecting the zooxanthellae algae that provide nearly 90% of its energy requirements (Glynn, 1996). When this takes place there are several repercussions that can occur:
over great distances, causing adverse effects such as acid rain in areas far from the
...d agriculture runoff, and toxic chemicals such as herbicides and pesticides.” – Earth justice.org. Oceans are heating up because of the climate change which is killing off many species because many marine life can only survive off a certain temperature. Waters are becoming more acidic because of the carbon monoxide cars bring out.
These results agree with the hypothesis that our “untouched and super-productive world” is affecting marine life ecosystems (Vannela, 2012). All of these results combined confirm the overall hypothesis that pollution is getting worse in the ocean and more marine life ecosystems are being affected, but there
The abiotic factors determine whether it cause damages or thrives the aquatic ecosystem. Every species has a tolerance range that influences its health, speed of growth and reproduction system. The more elevated tolerance range the smaller amount of survival aptitude tolerance the aquatic system has to flourish.
The control of aquatic pollution has been identified as an immediate need for sustained management and conservation of the existing fisheries and aquatic resources, because scientific knowledge on marine pollution is patchy, knowledge gaps have been identified as one of the major problems in introducing effective management strategies for its control.