Copyright 1998 Newsday, Inc.

Newsday (New York, NY)

February 17, 1998, Tuesday, ALL EDITIONS

SECTION: DISCOVERY; Page C07

LENGTH: 726 words

HEADLINE: BROWN TIDES: A GROWING THREAT

BYLINE: By Judy Fischer. SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT. Judy Fischer is a freelance writer.

BODY:

MARINE BIOLOGIST Donald Anderson called last week for an increased national effort to control harmful algal blooms, such as brown tides.

"Scientists have nothing to offer those who demand that algal blooms be controlled or destroyed in some way," he said. "We are nowhere, absolutely nowhere on that."

Nevertheless, Anderson, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod, Mass., praised the new Ecology and Oceanography of Harmful Algal Blooms (ECOHAB) program as the first nationally coordinated effort to study the causes of the problem.

Over the last decade Long Island has suffered from brown tide blooms, which caused an estimated $2 million damage to the Peconic Bay scallop industry in 1985 alone, the first year the brown tides appeared.

Begun in 1995, ECOHAB is a cooperative effort led by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) involving half a dozen federal agencies concerned with fisheries, food safety, health and the environment. This year the program will fund $4 million to $5 million in research, which includes $3 million to study pfiesteria outbreaks such as those in the Chesapeake region that left fish bleeding and dying last summer. The $3 million is for pfiesteria studies in Virginia, Delaware, North Carolina and Florida.

ECOHAB coordinator Kevin Sellner said the program will "expand our knowledge of how species respond to their environment and what conditions in the environment lead to blooms. We will get information specific to individual algae - how fast does it grow, how does it respond to light and nutrients."

Anderson believes this is just a first step. Using the brown tide as an example, he said, "Your baymen are sick of having the brown tide return year after year. We would like to say to them, The brown tide blooms because of this factor or that factor, and if we regulate this or stop doing that, the blooms might stop.' We need to learn what causes it, and mitigate it at that level. But if you can't find an obvious solution, such as pollution reduction, you have to look at what other strategies, like those used against insect pests on land, can be used to deal with aquatic blooms."

He said it takes the U.S. Department of Agriculture 10 years to find a biological control agent and determine whether it is safe to release against land-based agricultural pests.

"If we are ever going to get anywhere in controlling algal blooms, we need to start research now. The problems will keep coming; they may even get worse, and people will want to know why aren't we doing something about them. They are already asking that."

A harmful algal bloom occurs with a population explosion of tiny one-celled algae. The blooms may kill fish, make shellfish poisonous, discolor the water, prevent sunlight from reaching submerged vegetation, disrupt the food web and cause oxygen depletion. During a bloom, density may increase to millions of cells per liter. Some of the harmful algae are so toxic, however, Anderson said, they can be a tiny fraction of the total phytoplankton population and still be dangerous. Diarrhetic shellfish poisoning has been reported with concentrations of just a few hundred cells per liter. Some of the toxins have caused illness and death in people who have eaten contaminated shellfish.

Both Anderson and Sellner emphasized that federal and state testing programs have effectively kept tainted shellfish off the market. Anderson said problems occur when individuals harvest and eat shellfish from closed areas.

Since 1972 the number of blooms has increased on all the nation's coasts, with the mid-Atlantic up to Maine being particularly hard hit by paralytic shellfish poisoning, brown tides and fish kills. The Pacific Coast has been hit by paralytic shellfish poisoning, fish kills and amnesic shellfish poisoning. The Gulf of Mexico has seen neurotoxic shellfish poisoning, amnesic shellfish poisoning and brown tide.

According to Sellner, no one is certain why harmful algal blooms are increasing. "Some think they may be caused by human changes of the coastal ecosystems, such as runoff from farm fertilizers or sewage treatment plant discharges."

He said, too, some of the harmful organisms may have been introduced into American coastal waters from the ballasts of foreign ships.

GRAPHIC: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute Photo- Algal blooms can kill fish and people; causes are unknown.

LANGUAGE: English

LOAD-DATE: February 17, 1998