NARRAGANSETT, R.I. \u2013 March 8, 2017 \u2013 The toxic algae bloom that has closed parts of Narragansett Bay to shellfishing is somewhat of a mystery. Although the algae species has not been identified and why it is producing the toxin now, the nuts and bolts of how it happened and what will happen next are well studied, thanks to the Narragansett Bay Long-Term Plankton Time Series. The nearly 60-year research project at the 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s Graduate School of Oceanography, the longest of its kind in the world, is designed to understand the changing patterns of plankton in the bay.<\/p>\n
Managed by plankton expert Tatiana Rynearson, 溏心vlog免费B站 professor of oceanography, the time series involves the weekly collection and analysis of plankton from several depths in the bay. Based on her extensive knowledge of the algae in Narragansett Bay and how algae blooms form and dissipate, Rynearson provides answers to some of the pressing questions about the continuing toxic bloom.<\/p>\n
A: An algae bloom is the result of the perfect set of conditions for that particular algae. Algae are like plants; they photosynthesize, so they need light and they need nutrients, like nitrogen and phosphorous. They also need to have a situation where predators aren\u2019t there to eat all the algae. The amount of algae growth is a combination of how well they\u2019re growing plus who\u2019s there to eat them and how much they\u2019re eating.<\/p>\n
A: You don\u2019t generally think of blooms happening in winter \u2013 there are no flowers out yet and no leaves on the trees. But in Narragansett Bay we have a winter\/spring algae bloom that often occurs exactly at this time of year and often even earlier. We have a lot of light now, it\u2019s been pretty sunny, we have a lot of nutrients in the bay, and some of the grazers that are so important are not around. The classic spring bloom happens many places around the world, and it\u2019s really important for fisheries and to support the food web. That spring bloom is what kick-starts biological activity for the year. What makes this particular bloom interesting is that it includes an organism that is toxic.<\/p>\n
A: Pseudo-nitzschia is a genus of diatoms that has formed harmful algal blooms on the West Coast for quite some time. A lot of research has been done to try to figure what\u2018s going on out there. Pseudo-nitzschia is comprised of a number of species, some of which produce the toxin and some that don\u2019t, and the species that produce the toxin don\u2019t always produce the same amount or any toxin at all. So that\u2019s what makes it hard to predict and understand. There are clearly things going on that we don\u2019t understand.<\/p>\n
A: The reason it\u2019s toxic is because, as a member of the plankton, it gets eaten by things like clams and mussels and quahogs, which are filtering everything that\u2019s in the water, and they\u2019re filtering the Pseudo-nitzschia. The Pseudo-nitzschia is producing a toxin called domoic acid. The filter feeders bring that into their bodies, and those shellfish get harvested and eaten by people. That domoic acid causes an illness called amnesic shellfish poisoning \u2013 you might vomit, get a headache, and you could also get a coma from it, short-term memory loss and even death. It\u2019s quite a potent toxin.<\/p>\n
A: We don\u2019t actually know where it came from. We know that Pseudo-nitzschia is present in the bay and has been for a long time. Maybe there\u2019s a new species that we can\u2019t identify yet. There are about 48 species in this genus, and many of them don\u2019t look very different under the microscope; they\u2019re hard to tell apart. We know that the genus is around, but we don\u2019t know if there\u2019s a new species that\u2019s come in or a new strain that\u2019s come in, or if the existing inhabitants of Narragansett Bay have now turned toxic.<\/p>\n
A: There are probably two dozen species that produce domoic acid, and they may be here and just aren\u2019t producing domoic acid. The one that\u2019s producing domoic acid now might stick around and stop producing it. So we probably need to figure out what species it is and why it\u2019s producing domoic acid. We can get a sense of that from the Narragansett Bay Long Term Plankton Time Series, which has been run out of the Graduate School of Oceanography since the mid-1950s. For most of that time it was run by Prof. Ted Smayda, and it continues today. It gives us context for interpreting the Pseudo-nitzschia dynamic that we\u2019re seeing now. For the last 60 years, we\u2019ve been taking weekly plankton samples from the bay, so we can now get a sense of whether the Pseudo-nitzschia is there at all, is it in normal numbers, is this more than normal. We don\u2019t test for domoic acid, but we know what algae are there, and we can start to contextualize the dynamics and abundance of this organism in the water now. We\u2019re in a unique situation because we have all this data, and now we can go and mine the data and say \u2018what have we been seeing and is this year different from all the past years? What\u2019s going on that\u2019s generating these blooms?\u2019 Most places that have these blooms don\u2019t have a time series; they don\u2019t have any way to contextualize what they\u2019re seeing.<\/p>\n
A: There are grazers out there that will eat these algae, and they\u2019re probably eating them now. And the filter feeders are eating them. There\u2019s also a pretty good flushing rate in Narragansett Bay, so maybe they\u2019ll flush out into the ocean. And the algae community tends to change over time. So at this point, we can sit and wait and watch, and we can take samples during this event so we can figure out why it started. While we\u2019re not sure why this particular bloom happened now, there are a lot of vectors in the marine environment that can bring new algae into a new location. Was it a bird that came from a harmful algal location and brought spores of this species; is it just regular circulation that caused it; were they here already and they\u2019re just now responding to a particular environmental cue? All those things are unknown, so it would be unwise to do something about it since we don\u2019t know at this point what led to the bloom and if it\u2019s anything more than natural variation. Rhode Island DEM is really trying to stay on top of this. They\u2019ve been taking samples, they shut the shellfishery down in certain parts of bay, so they\u2019re concerned and are trying to do everything they can. While we keep an eye on it, they also want to keep everyone safe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NARRAGANSETT, R.I. \u2013 March 8, 2017 \u2013 The toxic algae bloom that has closed parts of Narragansett Bay to shellfishing is somewhat of a mystery. Although the algae species has not been identified and why it is producing the toxin now, the nuts and bolts of how it happened and what will happen next are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":72792,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72791\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}