algae

Massive bird die-offs on NW coast tied to mysterious algae spawning toxic sea foam

Nov. 5, 2009
in
A massive, weird and sickening environmental story is breaking along the coast of the Pacific Northwest: A toxic form of algae previously detected only rarely in those waters is killing thousands of sea birds.
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The single-celled algae called Akashiwo sanguinea is causing what sounds for all the world like a red tide, producing large swaths of chocolate- and rusty-colored waters. According to a story by Lynne Terry in The Oregonian, such deadly blooms have been detected off California and elsewhere worldwide in the past, but the algae has previously been picked up only in small and isolated areas of the Pacific Northwest. A U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service press release says the algae began showing up in September in Washington.
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The birds most affected are sea ducks -- white-winged scoters and surf scoters. Surf scoters' numbers have been trending down for some time now, worrying scientists and citizens such as those who walk Pacific Northwest beaches looking for dead birds. That network of beachwalkers is run by  University of Washington bird scientist Julia Parrish, who estimates that algae outbreak this fall has reduced scoters' West coast population by 5 percent to 7 percent:
That is a pretty significant bite into those species. I don't think it will knock the population back for years. But at least with surf scoters -- a species that's in decline   -- conservation scientists are rather concerned about it.
An earlier story by Terry and the press release outline the gruesome mechanism by which the algae kills the birds: When the single-celled algae are broken down by wave action, they create a toxic sea foam.

ExxonMobil "green company of the year?" Puh-leeze!

Aug. 26, 2009
in

It was one thing to see ExxonMobil's ad right on the front page of The Wall Street Journal on Monday, headlined "Energy from algae" and rhapsodizing about how its research efforts could someday result in algae taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

Fair enough. If a company decides to spend $600 million on research aimed at heading off disastrous levels of climate change, it can legitimately give itself a highly visible public pat on the back.

exxonmobilheaderlogo1But then I came across the Forbes piece, also published on Monday, that calls ExxonMobil the "green company of the year." Puh-leeze! (Subhead: "Oil from algae? Just a sideshow, Exxon's real thrust into green energy is a big bet on natural gas.")

One need look no further than today's headlines to see that ExxonMobil, far from being a "green" company, is pleading guilty to killing migratory birds.

OK, so obviously Forbes writer Christopher Heiman was reporting his piece long before this dead-birds case hit the news. But still, the mind reels trying to figure out how he and his editors could have come to the conclusion that ExxonMobil is somehow worthy of high praise for its environmental record.

Curtis Brainerd's "The Observatory" column for Columbia Journalism Review does a thorough job of explaining why Forbes stumbled badly here, simply based on the fact that Heiman found that natural gas is significantly better than coal from a greenhouse-gas standpoint. True enough, and it's also true that Exxon's going great guns on natural gas.

The slippery-slimy climate change solution

Jul. 17, 2009
in

We've been exploring for some time how algae might be the answer to our carbon-cycle woes. And now it's clear that we were on to something: Exxon is into algae!

You know it's right when it's in the NYT (that's still right, right?), and now the paper's announcing "Exxon to Invest Millions to Make Fuel From Algae." The quote from Exxon VP Emil Jacobs shows why the firm's PR folks need to try harder:

We literally looked at every option we could think of, with several key parameters in mind.  Scale was the first. For transportation fuels, if you can’t see whether you can scale a technology up, then you have to question whether you need to be involved at all. . . . I am not going to sugarcoat this — this is not going to be easy.

Still, we have to admire the forthrightness of a company that says, hey, we're trying this, but we're not really sure it will work. (Couldn't Emil just say that? No, I'm not angling for an Exxon PR job. Just trying to be helpful.)

Meanwhile, the Obama administration just announced the availability of $85 million for research into algae biofuels. That sounds like a lot, but in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't represent a World War II-like level of effort on climate change. But still, it's a start.

[caption id="attachment_1246" align="alignleft" width="200" caption="We're pretty sure researchers will need conditions more controlled than these. (Photo courtesy Vermont Department of Health.) "]We're pretty sure researchers will need conditions more controlled than these[/caption]

Alaskan “blob” stumps Coast Guard

Jul. 15, 2009
in

A mysterious “gooey” blob of unknown origins is drifting past the northern coast of Alaska, reports Don Hunter in the Anchorage Daily News. The substance, which stretches 12 miles long in places, is thick, dark and biological. Though it resembles oil from the air and discolors ice it passes, the Coast Guard has already determined the blob is a naturally occurring organism, and samples are being tested in Anchorage. Some speculate the organism might be a massive algae bloom, but no one has seen anything like this in the ocean before.

– Emily Linroth

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