Fact Sheet Oceanography Research Paper

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Harmful Algal Blooms

Weather events can impact ocean conditions in a variety of different manners. First, extreme events like hurricanes, coastal storms, and floods can physically transport organisms from part of the ocean to another part of the ocean, causing the type of disruption that leads to a harmful algal bloom. Second, extreme weather conditions like El Nino and La Nina can cause temperature changes that impact growing conditions in the ocean.

Ocean nutrients play a role in algal blooms because the blooms occur when nutrients are sufficiently abundant to feed the algae. Nutrient levels are impacted by other species in the water, temperature, and pollution.

Pollution may contribute to algal blooms because pollution can provide the nutrients these harmful algae need to survive and kill predator species that normally keep harmful algae levels in a safe range.

Harmful Algal Blooms: an Overview

Harmful algae blooms are microscopic, single-celled plants that live in the sea. A bloom refers to a proliferation of these single-celled organisms. While most algae species are non-toxic, some species are. The toxic species can produce neurotoxins that can be transferred through the food web.

Harmful algal blooms can have various causes, both natural and man-made.

Algal blooms cause significant financial damages in four distinct ways: increased costs of commerce, increased healthcare costs, costs for maintaining and monitoring waterways, and negative impacts on tourism.

Toxic blooms can be predicted.

Detrimental Effects of Harmful Algal Blooms

Over 200 species of algae (dinoflagellates, diatoms, raphidophytes, prymnesiophystes, silicoflagellates, ciliates, and cyanobacteria) are either known to be or have the potential to be harmful or toxic to a wide variety of organism.

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Algal species can produce poisons or cause excess growth that leads to deaths in marine life, and can even travel up the food chain and impact human life. The most commonly known fatal or harmful diseases that can result from algal blooms are: ciguatera fish poisoning, neurotoxic shellfish poisoning, paralytic shellfish poisoning, diarrheic shellfish poisoning, and amnesic shellfish poisoning.

Non-fatal effects include the depletion of oxygen in the lower-depths of the ocean (hypoxia), and sunlight blockage, which impacts growing conditions for other marine life.

Economic effects include impacts on the fishing industry, increased healthcare costs, maintenance and monitoring costs, and impacts on tourism.

Algae's Role in the Food Chain: How Harmful Algal Blooms Can Lead to Human Death

Algae are a phytoplankton. Phytoplankton is a primary producer and serves as the foundation for the ocean's entire food chain.

Phytoplankton is consumed by copepods, which are food for the shellfish and fish that people consume.

Shellfish and fish can serve different roles in the food web, as they may be predators or prey, given on the circumstances on any individual day. Therefore, it is inaccurate to describe the ocean as having a food chain; it actually has a very complex food web.

Human beings are outside of the ocean's normal food chain but are actually some of the fiercest of ocean predators. Every piece of seafood that a human consumes will have, somewhere in its history, phytoplankton.

Prediction and Intervention of Harmful Algal Blooms?

Predicting algal blooms may not lead to….....

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