Featured Image Credit: m01229 via Flickr
By K. Snyder
Last year, a deadly algal bloom spread across the entire West Coast. It was the largest documented outbreak in that area of algae that produced domoic acid neurotoxins. The bloom left innumerable sea lions beached and forced area fisheries to close for fear of poisoning.
Now, scientists at the University of Washington believe they have determined one of the main causes of the bloom.
Since the fall of 2013, a massive column of very warm water — nicknamed “the Blob” — has been sitting off the Pacific coast of the US and Canada. This anomaly has raised the average temperature of the surrounding ocean by 2.5 degrees Celsius — a margin that allowed the algae a more suitable environment to grow unchecked. The warmer waters produced by the Blob were low in nutrients, stressing the algae enough that they produced the domoic toxin during their rapid multiplication. What resulted was a coastline-long wave of thick, toxic water that washed up on the coasts of California, Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia.
The Blob’s temperature adjustment of the waters is impacting other ocean species as well; it was also thought to be the cause of massive coral bleaching and shifts in fish migrations.
These impacts are giving scientist a look at what the consequences of having a warmer ocean could mean for wildlife and coastal communities as climate change reshapes the future. The good news is that the warning signs for toxic algal blooms are better understood from this phenomenon and scientists hope that this knowledge will help coastal communities better prepare for inevitable future blooms.