Toxic Green Algae Takes Over Beaches Off Yellow Sea In China 66
An anonymous reader writes "Caused by what researchers say is local industry and agriculture pollution, the green algae (scientific name Enteromorpha prolifera), has resulted in the foul-smelling mass taking over parts of China's Yellow Sea. The event, which has occurred in the same region over the past six years, always during the summer, has grown exponentially since its last notable interference in 2008. This year's growth is reportedly double in size, measuring in at more than 11,158 square miles. According to a report from the Guardian, officials have removed 7,335 tons of the algae recently in an attempt to control the growth after beach-goers in the nearby city of Qingdao have remain unaffected by the disturbance. While strange in appearance, the algae is reportedly nontoxic to humans but can, however, leave behind the toxic gas hydrogen sulphide. According to a report from the Daily Mail, crews are working to remove the algae as the toxicity is caused if it is left to decompose."
biodiesel (Score:2)
seems like some enterprising person or (party-backed business) could make some lemonade.
Re: (Score:1)
The market is already saturated. How do you expect people to raise their prices in a world of abundance? It's more profitable to burn it where it lies, like how the refineries flare off the natural gas 'waste'.
Re:biodiesel (Score:4, Insightful)
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Seafood! (Score:2)
Since it is non-toxic then let's scoop it up and eat it. I had something like that one night in Hong Kong... I ordered the number 57 even though my hosts told me to never do that.
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57 was fermented whale semen (that's why it was green). Whatever floats your umm....algae, I guess.
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Since it is non-toxic then let's scoop it up and eat it. I had something like that one night in Hong Kong... I ordered the number 57 even though my hosts told me to never do that.
You should have ordered the 43 instead. Just sayin'.
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seems like some enterprising person or (party-backed business) could make some lemonade.
Yeah sure, then take a dump in it, figuratively and literally. Look at their rivers and you will understand the surrounding ocean.
English, man, English! (Score:5, Informative)
This is editing? WTF is up with our so-called editors? This summary is so far from proper English it's not even funny.
I've read better instructions that came with Chinese products that are notorious for their bad translations.
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Parser stack underflow
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I just realized that when I read things like that I end up skipping over most of it and not understanding anything. I used to think it was just my mind wandering, but I looked back at the things I've skimmed and skipped today and they all have the same thing in common: the grammar sucks.
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Insert rod P into hole V.
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Removing it... (Score:2)
Makes more room for new growth. How thoughtful! (c:
Not so yellow anymore (Score:3)
Just rename it. Problem solved.
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Yeah, but you run into one of those Crayola Crayons type of philosophical problems:
. . . is the sea "Yellow-Green" . . . or "Green-Yellow" . . . ?
Is it just me? (Score:2)
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No, it's not just you. The orignal article was quite short, and the summary is just a verbatim lift of most of the article. THe article was clearly written in a hurry, paerhaps from a press realease originally in some other language.
Also, one of my pet peeves shows up here, which I hoped we could keep off Slashdot. THe artical and the summary use "exponentially" to mean "fast", or at least, they don't give any data to show there is a constant doubling time. Slashdotters should know what "exponentially"
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paerhaps from a press realease originally in some other language.
It is a story about Chinese workers, removing algae caused by Chinese pollution, next to a Chinese city. I suppose it could have originated in a language other than English, but I wonder which one.
THe artical and the summary use "exponentially" to mean "fast"
No. They use "exponentially" to mean exponentially. If dx is proportional to x, then the increase is exponential. Biological growth normally follows a logistic function [wikipedia.org], which in its early phase is exponential.
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great... just a few more tens of thousands of square miles to saturate before the growth starts to level out.
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I mean what you know don't?
RTFA: Not toxic (Score:3, Interesting)
The algae, called Enteromorpha prolifera, is not toxic to humans or animals.
However the carpet on the surface can dramatically change the ecology of the environment beneath it. It blocks sunlight from entering the ocean and sucks oxygen from the water suffocating marine life.
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and when it decomposes releases Hydrogen Sulfide gas which is very toxic to humans and animals.
Won't last long (Score:1)
The Chinese will just take it home, cook it and eat it.
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"The Chinese will just take it home, cook it and eat it."
The Chinese will just take it home, cook it and sell it to the Japanese.
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"The Chinese will just take it home, cook it and eat it."
The Chinese will just take it home, cook it and sell it to the Japanese.
The Chinese will just take it home, cook it and sell it to the Japanese, who will re-package it for the American consumer. FTFY
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repackage it for the American consumer with a phonetically odd way of pronouncing the product name.
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The Chinese will just take it home, cook it and eat it.
If this happened off the coast of Guangzhou, sure, they would eat it. But it is off the coast of Qingdao. So it more likely they will figure out a way to brew it into beer. For several decades prior to WWI, Qingdao was a German treaty port. The Germans built quite a few breweries, and taught the Chinese how to run them. To this day, the city of Qingdao produces some of the best beer in Asia.
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Beer was invented during the Neolithic period in Egypt and Iraq.
Re:California Beer (Score:2)
I come from the country where they invented beer that tastes good.
Harvest it. (Score:1)
Why isn't somebody harvesting this? The nutrient content in this stuff is huge and, at the very least, it could be processed and incorporated into feedstock.
Lame joke (Score:1)
You know who else is decomposing? Beethoven.
Timescape (Score:3)
It got the Nebula award so some of you might have read it.
Blooms getting worse (Score:3)
The blooms on Clear Lake in California, possibly the most inaccurately-named body of water on the planet, have been getting worse as well. The city of Clearlake used to only smell like shit due to its decomposition about one year in six, now it's two in three. I thought that UV was supposed to be driving algae underwater, but probably it's only the kind we like.
Hardly news (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason ? Industrial farming, mainly. The manure that our farmers spread over the fields is washed down to the rivers and the sea shores. The level of phosphorous and nitrogen in the water rises and leads to massive, smelly "green tides" of algae on our beaches.
Unfortunately, no effective action is taken to correct these trends, and industrial farming tends to grow ever bigger and pollute our water ever more despite several warnings from the ECJ.
All Your Scum... (Score:2)
Sujiao-nori (Score:1)
Funny related story (Score:5, Interesting)
So my wife and I rented an RV for a trip through California last fall, and near the end of our trip we stopped and stayed a few days in a little place called Watsonville, at the Pinto Lake RV Park [pintolakepark.com]. It's a small park, very quiet, right by the side of a small freshwater lake. You can go out on the lake in a boat, and you can fish in the lake, but the park manager tells us there's no swimming allowed and you might not want to eat the fish you catch. Why? The entire lake is a deep, dark green color from a completely out of control algae bloom, and the algae is somehow poisonous to people and animals. All the waterfowl living in the lake would walk around the park leaving wads of bird poop all over the lawn, which were dark green instead of white due to all the algae in their diet. But besides the issue with the lake and a lack of shower/laundry facilities, it was a nice place.
The cause? Apparently, agricultural runoff from all the local farms in the area. In other words, excessive use of fertilizers.
Yellow Sea -- Green Sea (Score:2)
Chinese Luchadores??? (Score:3)
Check out the Mail Online article at the end.
Full-head coverage sunblock masks seem to be a very big thing in China, getting more and more popular every year.
I can't wait until they figure out how much more awesome those masks will be when they start decorating them like a Luchador.
Going to the beach will become quite an adventure!
NOT Toxic (Score:1)
TFA mentions clearly that the algae is NOT toxic, in fact people happily swim in it.
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Yeah, I heard that about wheat gluten coming from China as well.
Runs parallel to another thing new to China (Score:2)
China awash in green stuff screwing everything up = Capitalism
Algae blloming not uncommon (Score:2)
This image might look cool [wikipedia.org], but it just shows the scale of the problems the Baltic sea have. Happens every year now, so it's barely written about anymore.