Algae

CAMBRIDGE -- It looked like just another beautiful day on the water as Bill Dennison and his crew of biologists pushed off from their pier at the Horn Point Laboratory and sailed toward the mouth of the Choptank River. The sun glistened on the waves. In the distance, craggy, tree-lined peninsulas carved the river into jagged coves that have long been home to crabs and rockfish. But there were hardly any fishing boats. In fact, hardly anyone was on the river at all. It soon became clear why. The researchers passed large patches of brownish-white foam - so-called "mahogany tides" where the water is so thick with algae that no light can get through.

What are corals and coral reefs?Corals are animals, and their skeletons create reefs. The corals have microscopic, single-celled plants living in their tissues. The plant cells, or algae, give the coral extra nutritious compounds. The algae's energy prompts the coral to secrete a calcium carbonate skeleton. When many living and dead skeletons fuse over time, a coral reef is formed. Reefs are the largest structures made by living organisms.What's wrong with the reefs?Mostly, humans are what's wrong.

YOU ARE invited to spend a series of Sunday afternoons enjoying the concert series "Sundays at Three" at "Old Brick" Christ Episcopal Church.This series, described as "an intimate experience with classical music," starts Sept. 20 at the historic church at Dobbin and Oakland Mills roads when Steven Barta, principal clarinetist with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra since 1976, will be featured in Brahms' autumnal Quintet for Clarinet and Strings in B minor.Mozart's youthful Divertimento No. 3 in F major for string quartet and his more mature String Quartet in D major K, which features a cello, will provide a harmonic and adventurous finale to the afternoon.

BROOMES ISLAND -- Rough weather and a burst of algae growth dampened visibility, but not spirits, at the 11th annual "sneaker test" of water quality in the Patuxent River.Former Democratic state Sen. Bernie Fowler checked the river's clarity by wading in, hand in hand with dignitaries and squealing schoolchildren. Fowler lost sight of his toes and stopped at 35 1/2 inches deep -- not as good as last year's 44 1/2 inches, but better than average for the unscientific test.Rain and warm weather have fueled an algae bloom, marine scientists said.

Simple bales of barley now sitting in several Carroll County ponds may be the solution to a perplexing and destructive environmental problem nationwide: pond scum."

Films we loveSINCE everyone else is compiling a favorite-films list -- spurred by the American Film Institute's survey to determine the top English-language films of all time -- members of the editorial department were polled, too.It turns out the view from the Ivory Tower isn't all that different from the way AFI members look at the cinema. For the record, the top Sun editorial department film favorites were:1. "Casablanca"2. "Citizen Kane"3. "The Godfather" (Part I)4. "High Noon"5. "Gone with the Wind"6.

BEWARE THE flesh-eating creature from the bottom of the bay! It's a perfect ad for one of those silly 1950s science fiction movies. It's also nonsense, with just a hint of reality, like those fantastical films.But it is true that the federal government has rushed through grants of $500,000 this month to study the toxic "ambush algae" that may have caused some ulcers and sores on fish in the Chesapeake Bay and has been detected in two fish kills.The suspect microorganism, one of more than 700 algae species in the bay, is pfiesteria piscicida.

Not all global coastal water pollution can be pinned to too much nitrogen, but much of it can. In fact, there is growing scientific concern that the world's coastal waters are symptoms of something even larger gone terribly out of whack.An article published in January by nine scientists in the journal of the Ecological Society of America says that human activities in recent decades have virtually doubled the nitrogen available to life on the planet, "causing serious and long-term environmental consequences across large regions of the earth."

An elusive, fish-killing alga first spotted in the Chesapeake Bay three years ago has turned up again this year -- in a Southern Maryland laboratory on the Patuxent River and at an Eastern Shore fish farm, where 20,000 hybrid striped bass died during the summer under mysterious circumstances.The findings, reported by the Maryland Sea Grant College, are the first to link the so-called "ambush" alga, Pfiesteria piscicida, to fish deaths in the bay region. The single-celled microorganism, discovered in North Carolina in the late 1980s, has been blamed for killing millions of fish from the mid-Atlantic through the Gulf Coast.

Thousands of water birds that died mysteriously at the Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge seem to have been poisoned by a toxic form of algae that blooms in the huge, salty lake, according to new findings by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.Clark Bloom -- manager of the federal refuge in farm-rich Imperial County, Calif., near the U.S.-Mexico border -- said the discovery, although preliminary, is a great relief because the bird deaths have perplexed and worried wildlife biologists since they began three years ago."

John Neukam has been catching crabs in pots near the Middle River for decades. But this year, the crabs have been dying in the water, suffocated by a bright green algae bloom that is choking off oxygen and worrying watermen and recreational boaters. "You crab all week, you get a bushel and a half in your live box, and they die," said Neukam, after checking his pots yesterday morning. "I've been here all my life - 64 years - and we've only had this one other time, when fertilizer from a farm seeped into the cove."

With Memorial Day weekend about to begin, state biologists are racing to set up decontamination stations along six popular trout streams in an effort to stem the spread of an alien algae that destroys fish food supply and habitat. Strong saltwater is the enemy of didymo, an algae that forms a thick mat on the bottom of rivers and streams and suffocates plants, insects and tiny creatures. Scrubbing fishing gear and waders for a minute with a brush dipped in a saltwater solution kills microscopic traces of algae, preventing it from getting a free ride to another trout stream.

Maryland's premier trout stream, Gunpowder Falls, is under attack from an algae strain feared worldwide for its ability to coat the bottom of rivers and lakes and smother the habitat and food supply of fish. Heavy, with the consistency of a wool coat, Didymosphenia geminata is a recent invader of East Coast waterways. It begins as microscopic organism that travels from stream to stream on boats, fishing gear and the bottoms of felt boots and waders. The algae is not hazardous to humans, but could have a "profound" effect on fish and the quality of freshwater streams and recreation, upsetting the delicate balance of nature, said Jonathan McKnight, coordinator of the Department of Natural Resources invasive species team.

CAMBRIDGE -- It looked like just another beautiful day on the water as Bill Dennison and his crew of biologists pushed off from their pier at the Horn Point Laboratory and sailed toward the mouth of the Choptank River. The sun glistened on the waves. In the distance, craggy, tree-lined peninsulas carved the river into jagged coves that have long been home to crabs and rockfish. But there were hardly any fishing boats. In fact, hardly anyone was on the river at all. It soon became clear why. The researchers passed large patches of brownish-white foam - so-called "mahogany tides" where the water is so thick with algae that no light can get through.

An algae bloom appears to be the culprit behind dead fish found floating in the Inner Harbor yesterday morning, according to state environmental investigators. The fish kill - the second in the harbor in two months attributed to an algae bloom - was first reported by residents who complained about a stench Monday night. Most of the fish appeared to be scattered on the south side of the harbor near the marina and Rash Field. There were other fish closer to the Constellation, including some that washed up onto the concrete barrier.

Thousands of dead fish, along with decomposing algae, are causing a stench to emanate from the Inner Harbor and the waters off Canton, and a state official said yesterday that it might take at least a week to clear. The stink - and the dead fish - are the result of an algae bloom, or a "brown tide." State environmental officials have been investigating the fish kill since Sunday. The nutrient-rich harbor had a recent large bloom of microscopic algae that turned the water rust brown, said Charles Poukish, environmental program manager for Maryland Department of the Environment.

SAN FRANCISCO --After the last patient of the day walked out the front of Raytel Medical Imaging clinic, veterinarian Frances Gulland slipped an oversized animal crate through the back door. Inside was a California sea lion. The animal was emaciated, disoriented and suffering from seizures. A female with silky, caramel-colored fur, wide-set eyes and long whiskers, she was named Neuschwander, after the lifeguard who had found her six weeks earlier, comatose and trembling under a pier near San Luis Obispo.

After our dogwood dropped its leaves this fall, we noticed a gray powdery substance on the bark. Is this mold? The tree is in clay soil and part shade. You're seeing lichen, an organism composed of algae and fungi living in a symbiotic relationship that benefits both. Because the algae provides its own nutrients through photosynthesis and the fungi protect the algae from drying out, lichens can grow harmlessly on tree trunks. No control is necessary. In fact, lichens indicate good air quality.

THIS WEEK, if you attend at all to television or print news, you will know that "bad water," meaning water that is low on or devoid of oxygen, is ravaging the bay this summer with almost unprecedented fury. On Wednesday, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation staged a floating news conference to show the human face of what has become an annual out-of-sight, out-of-mind tragedy beneath the Chesapeake's tranquil surface. Chock-a-block with media from around the metro region, Capt. Sonney Forrest's 46-foot charter boat, Fin Finder, left the dock at Solomons about 6 a.m. Wednesday.

Coral reefs across the Caribbean have suffered an 80 percent decline in cover during the past three decades, a far more devastating loss than scientists had expected, according to a study released yesterday. "It's depressing," said marine biologist Isabelle Cote, one of the authors of the study, which appeared in this week's Science. "We all knew that we had a bad situation on our hands. But nobody expected it to be this bad." The researchers gathered information from 65 previous studies of 263 sites and analyzed it to construct a regional picture.