PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Guiding a 19-foot outboard across Narragansett Bay, John Torgan recalls how the deceptively clear water once harbored an aquatic jungle that could tangle the propeller of an unwary boater.
"As a little kid, I used to have to reverse the engine to kick the eelgrass out," says Torgan, 28, the baykeeper for Save the Bay, an environmental group here. "Now we search for it, squinting."
The eelgrass is gone -- all but a few scattered patches. And not coincidentally, so are the tasty scallops for which this bay used to be famous.
Stunted sea grasses and faded fisheries are just two of the symptoms of a subtle but growing environmental malady afflicting coastal areas around the nation and the world, discoloring once-sparkling waters and slowly robbing them of vitality.
From Narragansett to Chesapeake Bay and the Gulf of Mexico in this country, from the Baltic to the Black Sea in Europe, and along far-flung shores across Asia, waters are suffocating under a deluge of nutrients produced by human activities.
"It's an epidemic," says Donald Scavia, who oversees coastal ocean programs for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Preliminary results from a five-year survey find water quality woes related to nutrient pollution in more than half of U.S. bays and sounds, he says.
Scientists have a term for it: eutrophication. Derived from a Greek word meaning "well nourished," in this case it means overfed.
Nitrogen and phosphorus, the essential ingredients in plant fertilizer, are fueling runaway growths of algae in bays and poorly flushed coastal areas. These vast "blooms" of floating microscopic plants can turn the water green, brown or mahogany, and make it foul-smelling.
Algae overgrowth blocks out sunlight needed by aquatic vegetation like eelgrass. It also depletes oxygen in the water, contributing to declines in fish and shellfish. The NOAA survey found that about 30 percent of coastal areas sometimes have deep waters so devoid of oxygen they become virtual "dead zones" for shellfish and other bottom-dwelling marine animals.
As if that isn't bad enough, many researchers believe nutrients may be linked to outbreaks of toxic algae and microorganisms such as Pfiesteria piscicida, blamed for fish kills in the Chesapeake and elsewhere along the mid-Atlantic coast.
