Red Tide Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

This Red Tide Essay example is published for educational and informational purposes only. If you need a custom essay or research paper on this topic, please use our writing services. EssayEmpire.com offers reliable custom essay writing services that can help you to receive high grades and impress your professors with the quality of each essay or research paper you hand in.

Red tide is the common term used to refer to the dramatically increased concentration of microscopic phytoplankton or algae which tend to accumulate

near marine or fresh water surfaces. Currents play an important role in providing nutrients and transporting the algae, while the red in their name comes from the algae’s reddish pigment, which gives the appearance of a red color to surface waters. Not all red tide blooms are harmful, or even red in color. Some, however, can produce toxins that work their way up the food chain leading to severe negative impacts on an ecosystem.

Scientists more accurately refer to these as harmful algal blooms (HABs) and they are known to adversely affect higher life forms that might directly or indirectly ingest them. These algal toxins have led to large-scale fish kills, marine bird, large marine mammal, and human illnesses and mortality. Naturally, the frequency and intensity of HABs also significantly impact coastal economies and communities dependent on fisheries and other associated recreational activities.

Of the thousands of algae that form the basis of the marine food chain, only a very few are associated with HABs. Some of these include the dinoflagellates Alexandrium tamarense and Pfiesteria piscicida that are responsible for fish kills and whale deaths, and the diatom Pseudo-nitzschia australis. Since the 1980s HABs have been recorded from numerous sites across the globe including Ireland, Sweden, Guatemala, New Zealand, and U.S. coastal areas, to name a few.

Recent research, enhanced by an improved ability to monitor coastal fisheries systematically and detect such blooms, suggests the possibility of a number of human-induced and natural forcing factors influencing the global spread and frequency of HABs. These factors include the increased discharge of agricultural and human effluents and aquaculture by-products causing for nutrient rich waters stimulating algal growth, changes to the chemical composition of estuarine and coastal ecosystems, the possible dispersal of harmful algal species from global shipping and ballast water discharges, long term climate variability, and oceanographic parameters including currents and nutrient upwelling.

Engaging in the mitigation and control of HABs is complicated by their multidimensional nature, including their physiology and toxicology, the distributed nature of their impact on ecosystems, and their occurrence across global coastal waters. Thus far, monitoring programs provide early public health warnings to minimize human impacts. However, longer term mitigation strategies would need to consider controls on land-based nutrient runoff and would be considerably more difficult to implement. Within the United States, the Harmful Algal Bloom and Hypoxia Research and Control Act (HABHRCA) of 1998 provides the federal government a role in combating HABs. The recent reauthorization of this act aims to involve resource managers in developing monitoring and mitigation activities best suited to local conditions.

Bibliography:

M. Anderson, “Toxic Red Tides and Harmful Algal Blooms: A Practical Challenge in Coastal Oceanography,” Reviews of Geophysics (Supplement, 1995);
L. Bushaw-Newton and K.G. Sellner, “Harmful Algal Blooms,” in National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), State of the Coast Report (NOAA, 1999).