It's on us. Share your news here.

China’s port city Qingdao suffers worst algae infestation

Workers clear algae along the coast in Qingdao, Shandong province, China June 12, 2021. Picture taken June 12, 2021. China Daily via REUTERS

Posted on July 22, 2021

BEIJING, July 20 (Reuters) – China’s eastern port city Qingdao is experiencing the worst ever algae infestation in the region, with more than 1,700 square km of coastal area blanketed by harmful green seaweed, also known as “green tide”.

Qingdao has suffered from algae for 15 years. It normally appears from late spring and lasts for three to four months, damaging the local marine ecosystem as algae take oxygen from other organisms and churn out toxic odours while decaying.

More than 1 million tonnes of algae are expected to be removed from coastal waters, state-backed China News reported on Monday, citing an expert from the Institute of Oceanology at Chinese Academy of Sciences (IOCAS).

Qingdao city authorities had dispatched over 12,000 vessels to collect some 450,000 tonnes of algae by last week.

Operations at Qingdao port, a major oil transporting hub, have not been affected by the algae so far.

The algae floating in Qingdao mainly comes from the Subei shoal, a shallow area off the coast of northern Jiangsu province, said Yu Rencheng, a researcher from IOCAS.

Since at least 2006, China’s central government, coordinating with the eastern province in Shandong, where Qingdao is located, and Jiangsu, had launched a campaign against the algae explosion and invested 1.99 billion yuan ($307.24 million) in 2018-2019 to support marine environmental protection.

But the algae still comes each year when the temperature climbs to a level that encourages its growth.

Experts have previously said the explosion of algae follows intensive farming of seaweed in the nearby region and increasing organic matter such as nitrogen and phosphorus coming from fertilisers and residential sewage washed into the sea.

“The scale of the green has declined to a certain extent after a few years of control from the source in northern Jiangsu. But it is still relatively difficult to completely solve the problem in a short time,” said Yu.

The table below shows previous algae infestations in China’s Yellow Sea region tracked by the Ministry of Natural Resources.

Year
First detected by vessels
Time of disappearance
Maximum area covered(square km)
2011
mid-April
late-August
560
2012
late-March
late-August
267
2013
mid-to-late-March
mid-August
790
2014
early-April
mid-August
540
2015
mid-April
early-August
594
2016
mid-April
early-August
554
2017
mid-April
mid-to-late-July
281
2018
late-April
mid-August
193
2019
late-April
early-September
508
2020
early-April
late-July
192

($1 = 6.4771 Chinese yuan renminbi)

Source

It's on us. Share your news here.
Submit Your News Today

Join Our
Newsletter
Click to Subscribe