It's nearly August and, in the Northern Hemisphere, that means the emergence of the red tide in lakes, steams and oceans. The red tide is actually a swarm of an organism, often called red algae, although, in truth, it is a cyanobacteria and not really algae. Both cyanobacteria and algae are everywhere in our water. Most of them are beneficial. Some, however, produce toxins. The toxins the cyanobacteria called red algae produce are called cyanotoxins. Given nutrients, these species double in size in as little as 24 hours. They all, algae and cyanobacteria like, love nitrogen, and our civilization is feeding it to them. The United States Geological Service estimates 153,000 metric tons of "nutrient" -- meaning nitrates and phosphates -- have been sent out into the Gulf of Mexico from the mouth of the Mississippi this year. The dead zone which results from this now covers an area the size of Connecticutt.
But closer to home for most of us, our lakes are seeing the red tide, arising from the same flow of nutrients from our collective ass into the waters of our nation. An artificial ecology is afoot, and these critters are responding according to their nature. It so happens an agricultural practice exists which can turn that tide and introduce a negative feedback loop into this brave new ecology of our creation: fields of algae. The best of breed of these technologies is called algal turf scrubbers (ATS), invented in the 1970s by Dr. Walter Adey of the Smithsonian Institution. Now field tested and proven for over thirty years, it exemplifies the opportunity to unleash our farmers in the quest to turn the red tide back everywhere.
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