Last year, China was given a wake up call. Its largest bodies of fresh water were turning into a pea soup from algae blooms. It was in the middle of summer, we had been experiencing a drought, and chemicals reacted. Residents were unable to drink the water, industry was forced to shut down, and crop damage occured. It was a mess. To the credit of the central government, action was quick. Polluters were shut down, the water was “cleaned” and water service resumed. This year though, 4 months early, the algae blooms are back. Last week Taihu reportedly saw its first blooms, then Daichi, and not Chaohu. Where this year and last year differ is that this year could see larger problems. After all, the algae is 4 months early! and while I am not a water scientist, my hunch is that it gets back to the drought last year. Outside of the major snow storm, and some recent rain, China has been fairly dry in the Yangtze Delta. This mean that lakes, river, and other bodies of water are seeing levels drop.. and that means that concentration levels of everything in the water are going up (think of fresh orange juice vs the frozen stuff).. and that means that the catalyst reactions that form the algae blooms can occur more easily. According to one report, this is the process:

“Normally, algae need a proper proportion of nitrogen and phosphorus, continuous temperatures above 25 degrees centigrade and strong sunlight for at least three days,” to thrive, Xiao said. “Although there are no signs of a massive bloom of algae in the lake, current conditions are conducive to algae growth.”

So, with that in mind, and keeping in mind that a billion USD was thrown at the Taihu problem without much result… the government has a new plan. Algae eating carp According to the IHT article China turns to algae-gobbling carp, hoping to clear fetid lakes — but who will eat them?

Workers dumped 1.6 million silver carp fry into Chaohu Lake in February in the largest such project in China. They expect each fish to eat as much as 100 pounds (about 45 kilograms) of algae as they grow, helping to ensure clean drinking water for more than a million people. About 125 miles (200 kilometers) east of Chaohu, fisheries workers released 100 million whitebait fry in Taihu Lake in March, hoping they will eat up the nitrogen and phosphorous that feed algae blooms that forced the cutoff of water to millions of residents last summer. Another 50 tons of whitebait and carp fry were dumped into Taihu last week to counter an unusually early algae bloom, said Fan Xiao, an official with the Taihu Fishery Administration.

and the question that now is running through my mind is - Even if successful, what are going to be to long term ecological impacts of this program? Are these carp native, and if not, what will be the ripple effects of dumping millions of these carp into the pond? Perhaps at this point I should direct readers back to my articles last week Fighting Water Pollution in China Through Organic Farming as a way to prevent the pollution in the first place (a large percentage of the chemicals causing the blooms are from the farms) and Algae Power Opporutnities in China? as a way to potentially clean up the mess. Perhaps, I would be best to consult a scientist before jumping to conclusions, but it seems simple to me that new solutions to preventing the problems (i.e. industrial waste water treatment and reducing chemical impacts in the agricultural sector) only make sense.