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Scientists collecting samples of the algae. Lake Superior is one of several major bodies of water where algae blooms have drawn scientific scrutiny.CreditCreditBrenda Moraska Lafrancois
Christine Hauser reports for the New York Times: In 19 years of piloting his boat around Lake Superior, Jody Estain had never observed the water change as it has this summer. The lake has been unusually balmy and cloudy, with thick mats of algae blanketing the shoreline.

“I have never seen it that warm,” said Mr. Estain, a former Coast Guard member who guides fishing, cave and kayak tours year-round. “Everybody was talking about it.”

But it was not just recreational observers along the shores of the lake who noticed the changes with concern. Lake Superior, the largest of the Great Lakes with more than 2,700 miles of shoreline, is the latest body of water to come under increased scrutiny by scientists after the appearance this summer of the largest mass of green, oozing algae ever detected on the lake.

From the Gulf Coast to the northernmost shores of the United States, scientists and government officials are working to decipher algae blooms to help them interpret the causes of the blooms, changes to their climates, and the effects the blooms have on public health and regional environments.


Scientists generally agree that algae blooms are getting worse and more widespread, and are exacerbated by the warmer water, heat waves and extreme weather associated with climate change. They are also intensified by human activity, such as from farm and phosphorus runoff, leakage from sewer systems, and other pollution.
The problems that algae blooms pose to fresh and marine waters have been propelled to the forefront in recent years by high-profile events like the shutdown of the water supply in Toledo, Ohio, in 2014 after toxic algae formed over the city’s water-intake pipe in Lake Erie, as well as the production of a toxin by a species of algae off the West Coast in 2015.
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More recently, in the waters off southwestern Florida, a toxic algal bloom known as a red tide persisted this year for more than nine months, the longest time period since 2006. The overgrowth killed wildlife and made some beaches noxious.
Other areas, including the Finger Lakes in New York and Utah Lake south of Salt Lake City, have also experienced an unusually high number of blooms in recent years.
This week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s laboratory for environmental research on the Great Lakes warned that some parts of Lake Erie were not fit for recreational activities because of an algal bloom.

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