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Saturday, July 8, 2017
A Dreaded Forecast for Our Times: Algae, and Lots of It
Photo
A satellite image showing an algal bloom that caused a temporary ban on using tap water in Toledo, Ohio, in 2014.CreditNational Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Every Thursday night, Bill Korbel, a veteran meteorologist, offers his standard weather forecast to viewers on a Long Island cable channel. Then he follows up with his outlook for toxic algae.
On a map, Mr. Korbel points out areas with high concentrations of algae — natural gatherings of microscopic plankton that, while often innocuous, can degrade water quality and even be dangerous.
“Brown or red tide is much catchier than harmful algal bloom,” Mr. Korbel joked about the right wording to use in his broadcast. It’s a relatively new topic for him, something that was never part of his decades-long career. Nor was it part, he said, of his meteorology training at New York University. “That was down the hall, in oceanography,” he said.
Mr. Korbel may not be an outlier for long. If a growing number of scientists have their way — and can get federal funding they say is desperately need to protect the public — algae forecasts could become as common as weather reports, and as essential.
Toledo, Ohio, had to temporarily ban the use of tap water two years ago when toxic algae bloomed in Lake Erie, for example, and California authorities advised people to avoid eating certain crabs contaminated by algae. Nationwide, the health and economic costs from harmful blooms are estimated at $82 million a year, according to the federal government.
Sophisticated sensors can be deployed to measure when toxins are reaching harmful levels, allowing officials to redirect fishing, beachgoers or water treatment efforts.
In 2014, Congress reauthorized the Harmful Algal Bloom and Hypoxia Research and Control Act, originally passed in 1998, to encourage more research. But the measure didn’t actually provide funding; it only signaled the need for it.
So money for algal bloom science comes from more general federal science funds, and those pots are shrinking. Congressionally approved funding for a broad range of related science is around $9 million this year, down 45 percent from five years ago, according to several scientists involved in the research. That means less money for deploying sensors or even to pay for boats and crews to monitor the shorelines.
“It’s a paradox,” said Christopher Gobler, a professor of marine sciences at Stony Brook University who provides the data for Mr. Korbel’s weekly report and believes the field should be more mainstream. “We need it more than ever, and we’ve brought ourselves to the precipice of making great forecasts, but we can’t make it happen.”
Dr. Gobler and his team do their sampling the old-fashioned way — by fanning out on Mondays around Long Island and scooping up water samples. His project is financed largely by foundations.
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Evelyn Lessard, a professor of oceanography at the University of Washington, has faced steep challenges in trying to do more advanced forecasting. Eighteen months ago, the National Science Foundation helped her acquire a $135,000 sensor that sucks in water, takes photographs and transmits them to researchers, who can identify algae that may be toxic.
Such a sensor can be a lifesaver, as it was in 2008 when an early version of the technology in the Gulf of Mexico picked up signs of a toxin that led to a monthlong shutdown of shellfish harvesting off the Texas coast, and a recall of mussels, clams and oysters.
In the case of Dr. Lessard, though, the grant money for the sensor was not enough to cover the cost of training to use it, and of deploying it off San Juan Island, Wash.
She wrote two proposals for funding — about $125,000 for two years — to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, which has said that bloom forecasts are a priority for the agency. Both grant applications from Dr. Lessard were given high marks by NOAA reviewers, but there was no money to support them, and the sensor remains warehoused in Massachusetts. “It’ll sit on a lab bench,” she said.
Scientists say at least 20 sensors are needed around the country at a cost of about $7 million, including training and deployment. The only sensors now in use for any extended period, they say, are in the Gulf of Mexico, though the funding for those is scheduled to run out in 2018.
Vera Trainer, a NOAA scientist in Seattle who studies algal blooms, had to ask for volunteers to go on a research expedition to study algal concentrations in the Pacific Ocean because she did not have the money to send her own staff.
“I feel like a beggar,” she said.
“It’s not just robots that we need,” Dr. Trainer added. “We need the research that helps us understand the hot spots, when the cells are most toxic, in what years they’re going to be most intense, the effects of climate change.
“Without the basic knowledge, we have no forecast.”
President Obama’s 2016 fiscal-year budget called for $13 million for research related to harmful algal blooms.
“Unfortunately, there has been an increase in the number, frequency and type of algal blooms,” 19 House Democrats wrote in a letter late last year to ranking members of the House Appropriations Committee, in a failed effort to have the funding level met. The increase in blooms, the letter stated, “is having a crippling effect on local and regional economies.”
“Congress has been asleep at the switch for a long time,” Glen Spain, the Northwest regional director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, a commercial fishing trade group, said in a phone interview.
Mr. Spain said the early warning systems could help fishermen avoid millions of dollars in losses like those they suffered last year when toxic blooms devastated the West Coast crab season.
“We can’t live in a world where we don’t know what’s going on and we don’t know what to expect,” he said. “The more advanced notice, the better we know what to do.”
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