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RED TIDE - CHINA (GUANGDONG)

A ProMED-mail post
<http://www.promedmail.org>

Date: 3 Oct 2000
From: M. Cosgriff <mcosgriff@hotmail.com>
Source: Straits Times 3 Oct 2000 [edited]

AOTOU (China) -- After 2 decades of breathless economic development -- and the pollution and ecological shifts going with it -- severe red tides have begun to plague China's vast coastline, surfacing unexpectedly like thieves and stealing the earnings of millions of people who depend on the ocean's bounty to survive.

Aotou, perched on the edge of a bay opening on to the South China Sea, has been the victim of at least 2 major red tides this season. Thousands of dead fish floated in the bay off Aotou. The fishermen have had their livelihoods threatened increasingly by one of China's biggest environmental problems, a little-publicized blight experts say costs the country more than US$100 million (S$173 million) every year. Two years ago, a massive algae bloom near Hong Kong killed up to 75 percent of the entire stock of Hong Kong's fish farms, wiping out local fishermen and triggering a political outcry in the former British territory.

In Aotou, red-tide outbreaks interrupt the simple routine of daily life in this picturesque corner of southern Guangdong province. Once the algae reach full bloom, residents have little choice but to wait out the event, which can take anywhere from a few days to several weeks. All of that adds up to lost income for fishermen.

The algae multiply so quickly that at the peak of an invasion in August, a quart of seawater was found to contain about 10 million algae cells.

The areas hit hardest by the red-tide phenomenon have been Bohai Sea in the north-east, the East China Sea and the South China Sea. Large-scale red tides also encroach regularly on China's Zhoushan Islands in the East China Sea, not far from Shanghai. And in the south, toxic blooms strike around Guangdong and Fujian provinces.