http://www.app.com/article/20110819/NJNEWS/308200004/Algae-bloom-stretches-100-miles-along-Jersey-coast?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|Frontpage
Scientists are tracking an unusually large algae bloom extending nearly 100 miles along the Jersey Shore, but they say the mass of microscopic plants poses no danger to people or marine life.
“We’re seeing a large bloom of phytoplankton,” said Josh Kohut, an oceanographer and assistant professor with the Rutgers University Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences.
“It’s not something completely out of the ordinary, but it is unusual for its size,” he said.
Kohut said the bloom appears to be a naturally driven event, with the phytoplankton growing on nutrients pulled up from deep waters by upwelling. It’s the same wind-driven phenomenon of summer that pushes warm surface water away from the beach, leaving swimmers shivering at the nip of colder waters in August.
“It’s along about two-thirds of the New Jersey coastline, from the southern end of Monmouth County to Cape May, and it’s going offshore 20 to 30 miles,” he said.
Algae blooms get close monitoring from environmental and public health agencies, in case they are toxic organisms like the infamous red tides of New England. This bloom is benign, but scientists are keeping an eye on dissolved oxygen levels in the bloom, because those can drop as the plants die and decay.
A robot probe from the Rutgers fleet of Slocum electric gliders is already cruising in the bloom and transmitting water quality data back to the New Brunswick control center, and a second underwater glider will be launched soon, Kohut said.
“We’re seeing lower oxygen values,” but nothing dangerous for fish, Kohut said. Oxygen in the bloom offshore is around 8 parts per million, with pockets of 4 ppm close to shore, but “things don’t get critical for fish until you get below 2” ppm, he said.
While satellite imagery shows the vast bulk of the bloom off southern New Jersey, there appears to be a northern component that may be fueled by nutrients washing out of New York Harbor from last weekend's heavy rains, said Heather Saffert, staff scientist with the Sandy Hook-based environmental group Clean Ocean Action.
“It seems to be two oceanographic events going on at once,” Saffert said. “It seems the upwelling process started in mid-July, and this latest bloom started after the rains.”
Heavy rains over northern New Jersey and New York dumped a report 4 to 10 inches of rain in some places, enough to push waste out of combined sewer overflows in urban areas and flush pollution off streets, she said.
A 2004 study by Rutgers oceanographers documented how pulses of storm water-borne nutrient pollution regularly surge out of the Hudson River and feed algae blooms outside the harbor and down along the Monmouth County coastline.
