A vetrinarian who was riding his horse on the northern Britany coast of France last week almost died except he was pulled out quickly by local workers. His horse died in the yard deep rotting seaweed almost immediately. The beach is one of around 70 in the area that has been infested with a cover of a tidal green algae for years. Local cities have been trying to clean up the toxic hydrogen sulphide producing algae, but one of the workers was taken to the hospital in a coma. The local experts point out that the Britanny area is 5% of the arable land, but has 60% of the pigs farms in all of France. Correlation does not prove causation, but some nice nitrates feeding the algae after the fold.
Jean-François Piquot, a spokesman for the environmental group Eau et Rivières said, that toxic seaweed had been present on beaches in Brittany for decades and was spreading.
"There are about five beaches that are unusable. The problem is getting worse." Up to 70,000 cubic meters of seaweed is cleared off about 70 beaches every summer in Brittany, according to Eau et Rivières.
"There is no doubt that farming is to blame," said Mr Piquot. "Britanny has 5 per cent of French agricultural land but 60 per cent of the pigs, 45 per cent of the poultry and 30 per cent of the dairy farms. As our rivers are not long, the pollution does not have time to clear before the water reaches the sea. If it enters a closed bay and there is sunlight, that produces the seaweed."
The blooms include intertidal masses abandoned on the shore as well as sub-tidal blooms
in deeper waters just outside the tides:
Blooms of drifting green algae often develop in shallow coastal zones that receive significant nutrient inputs. Each spring and summer, some fifty bays and coves in Brittany (France) are affected in this way. Until now, in this region, only the algae present in the surf zone or stranded ashore, constituting an intertidal stock, have been taken into account. Another stock of algae, which was subtidal and of the same species (Ulva spp.), was found in the Bay of Douarnenez, one of the ten areas most affected by these algal blooms. This subtidal Ulva stock was located beyond the surf zone, at depths reaching 15 m. It was about the same size as the intertidal stock, viz., a few thousand tons on average. Subtidal Ulva stocks were generally found lying on the sandy bottom in a distribution showing no particular pattern. Biomass ranged from almost zero to 1.547 kg m−-2 of fresh and spun-dried algae. However, at depths from 3 to 7 m they were often arranged in strips a few dm wide, due to the swell's effect. The bottom conditions of temperature, salinity, irradiance and dissolved inorganic nitrogen measured during spring and summer are suitable for the growth of Ulva in the subtidal zone. Both intertidal and subtidal drifting Ulva stocks are mobile and capable of exchanging material. In spring, the intertidal stock's inoculum is likely to come from the subtidal. Later in the season, the subtidal stock could be supplied, at least partially, by the intertidal.
It's NASTY stuff; Pierre Philippe, of the Lannion hospital in Brittany, said
He had treated several cases of poisoning caused by the seaweed among local residents, including a council worker paid to clear beaches of the algae who was taken to hospital in a coma. The health scare is a new blow to the French tourism industry, already suffering from a big fall in the number of British visitors. The dangers were highlighted after Vincent Petit, 27, a veterinary surgeon from Paris, said that rotting seaweed a meter deep had killed his horse last week as he rode across St-Michel-en-Grève beach. Mr. Petit lost consciousness and was pulled off the beach. A post-mortem on the horse showed that it had died of pulmonary edema caused by inhaling hydrogen sulphide given off by the rotting seaweed.
Maybe someone should call Bill Gates to turn it into bio-fuel.