Harmful Algae Blooms Impact the Future
Upstate New York’s Finger Lakes are common locations for weekend getaways. However, algae blooms have impacted lakes around the world, and it is not uncommon for ones’ hometown swimming area to be shut down from a potentially harmful algae bloom (HAB), including local spots like Conesus Lake .
Isidro Bosch, Professor in biology, stresses the importance of knowing what an algal bloom is, and the difference between non-harmful algae blooms and HAB’s.
“An algal bloom is just a proliferation [large number] of either one species or many species of mostly microalgae,” said Bosch. “When there's a bloom, it means that a burst of nutrients got into the lake somehow, you know from the stream, or even from, from the bottom of the lake. And then all of a sudden, things grow as fast as they possibly can, because they have all the nutrients they need.”
“The problem begins with the group that we're concerned about — these cyanobacteria, a type of photosynthetic [reacts with light] bacteria, because it turns out that just about all of them produce some sort of toxin.” Bosch added, “The plants are microscopic, so there aren't any leafy things like you find near shore or filamentous. They're mostly microscopic single cells. It's a matter of understanding and these HABs are photosynthetic [light reacting] bacteria. In the scientific community, we call them cyanobacteria.”
He went on to explain, “Photosynthetic bacteria seem to produce toxins as a way to outcompete one another. So [the bacteria] produce toxins to slow the growth rate of other things. That way [the bacteria] can absorb the nutrients and [the bacteria] can grow a lot more than any [other bacteria] and dominate.” In this case, he is talking about the survival of the fittest in the context of algae blooms.
The danger lies in that, “Those very toxins can affect people and it can affect pets, and there have been quite a few cases of dogs drinking water that has these toxins and dying.” According to Bosch, around World War II, a tribe in Papua New Guinea had high cases of dementia that was later linked to the cyanotoxin in the water they drank.
“If you contact the toxins, you can get skin irritations and alike and allergic reactions,” said Bosch. “But it's only when you ingest it, that you're really under any kind of serious risk.”
“There's a risk factor because they are known to produce toxins, and there's a variety of them we know that produce toxins. We know what toxins they produce, but the difficult thing is, they don't always produce the toxins so it's a little bit unpredictable,” said Bosch.
Bosch explained, “[One lake was] so bad a few summers ago that they had to close the lake to swimming.”
While extremely bad to humans and dogs, “It does pose a risk in terms of the ecosystem, but a lot of things just tend to avoid it.” However, not all marine life is unaffected by the HAB.
Bosch said, “Here’s the thing: these cyanobacteria are native to the lakes, they've always been here. They weren’t so frequent and so dominant as they are now.”
Bosch advised, “Don't forget the environment that belongs to everyone, doesn't just belong to companies. It belongs to all of us. And so we have a stake in protecting our environment. We need to be proactive rather than reactive, and anticipate these problems and prevent them from actually taking place.”
The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation website has more information on HABs. To learn more, go to https://www.dec.ny.gov/chemical/83310.html. To see a map of current and recent algal blooms in NY lakes near you, visit https://nysdec.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=ae91142c812a4ab997ba739ed9723e6e.