Marine Algal Blooms

The creation of this toxic slime through nutrient pollution degrades biodiversity and damages commercial marine operations, but is notoriously hard to eliminate.

Overview

Oceanic nitrate and phosphorus pollution is harmful for the marine environment and damaging to marine-related human activities. These nutrients flow into water bodies from human sewage (particularly in South America, Asia and Africa), fertilisers, livestock waste, stormwater drainage and aquaculture. They cause Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs), eutrophication and ocean dead zones (hypoxia), the latter rising from 10 cases in 1960 to 762 in 2021.

The mass proliferation of phytoplankton in HABs produces harmful toxins and oxygen-depleting biomass accumulation, increasing the vulnerability of marine life to disease, reducing biodiversity, degrading ocean ecosystems and contributing to global warming by reducing the capacity of oceanic ecosystem carbon sinks.

This increasingly regular occurrence is leading to the closure of fisheries, declines in tourism revenue and a loss of traffic and berthing in non-tidal marinas due to off-putting slime and rotting organic matter. Clean-up is currently challenging and costly.

How it works

ALGAEZAP 2 contains bacterial compositions that have been specially formulated to digest marine algal blooms and, crucially, their food sources. This is delivered in ABS’ Microzone carrier medium in the form of replaceable blocks, saturated with bacteria, nutrients and micro-pores that provide not only a perfect nutrient-rich habitat for rapid proliferation, but also protection from predation.

Benefits

Regular dosing will not only reduce the problem, it will prevent recurrence and the only by-products as carbon dioxide (95%) and water (5%).