Dead fish belly up in Lake Merritt and San Francisco Bay this past August sent scientists like Keith Bouma-Gregson scrambling to pinpoint the cause. A harmful bloom of marine algae had taken up residence in the Bay, and while many of the fish died from the resulting lack of oxygen in the water, toxins produced by the algae could have played some role, says Bouma-Gregson, a biologist with the US Geological Survey and regional expert on HABs. The Delta is no stranger to HABs, which in recent years, with warming temperatures and drought, have been on the rise. But an event like the one in San Francisco Bay—a different kind of algae with different impacts but a harmful bloom nonetheless—hadn’t occurred in a decade.
Galvanized by visible loss of life, from bat rays to leopard sharks, citizens started taking pictures and making counts, while local science groups and government agencies scrambled to create a digital place to collect their observations. “When an event like this is so large, it can be hard to cover every location being impacted,” says Bouma-Gregson. “But that’s one of the really amazing things about the 21st century. With GPS and cameras on our phones, you can really transfer information very quickly!”
Keith Bouma-Gregson
Despite the increasing alarm over HABs, there is no coordinated or funded strategy to monitor them in the San Francisco Estuary. To explore prospects, the Delta Stewardship Council is holding a two-day workshop November 8-9. Meanwhile, Bouma-Gregson covers a few basics on harmful algal blooms in this brief Q & A and [link the following to the Science in Short Podcast] longer online audio interview.
Q: What are HABs?
A: Harmful algal blooms occur when algae grow rapidly and accumulate in the water column. When the abundance of algal cells is high it can negatively impact ecosystem health and human health.
Q: Why are they a problem for Delta fish, dogs, and people?
A: HABs are a problem for people and pets primarily because many HAB species can produce toxins which are harmful to humans, mammals, and other animals. In the Delta, HABs are formed by a group of photosynthetic bacteria called Cyanobacteria. Not all cyanobacteria produce toxins, but if a bloom is producing toxins and the concentrations become elevated then that could result in negative symptoms or an illness. The primary exposure route is ingestion, which involves accidentally, or in the case of animals or small children, intentionally drinking water with cyanobacterial cells.
Q: Can HABs get into our drinking water?
A: Cyanotoxins can be treated by drinking water plants but require additional treatment considerations and staff time to deal with their presence. Besides toxins, cyanobacteria produce compounds which cause taste and odor and clogging issues for drinking water providers.
Q: How are the recent fish kills in San Francisco Bay different than Delta blooms?
A: The organisms that bloom in the Delta and the Bay are very different. In freshwaters, like the Delta, HABs are primarily formed by cyanobacteria, a group of photosynthetic bacteria. In coastal waters or estuaries, like the Bay, HABs are usually formed by eukaryotic algae, which are more complex than cyanobacteria.
Unlike most Delta blooms, the HAB in the Bay had a major impact on dissolved oxygen concentrations. When a bloom starts to decline, the algal cells die and sink to the bottom. Bacteria then begin decomposing the algal cells, this process uses oxygen and can deplete the oxygen in the water column. When this occurs, other animals do not have enough oxygen to survive, and suffocate in the water.
Q: How do you monitor HABs?
A: For citizens, a few tell-tale signs are water that is discolored, or has streaking at the surface. For scientists and water quality managers, we use both images from satellites orbiting the earth as well as on-the ground collection of water samples and measurements of different constituents in the water. Blooms are quite dynamic, changing over the course of days to weeks, and also being moved by currents and winds. Intensive monitoring can be challenging and costly, but some areas have been able to train community members to identify HABs in the field or under a microscope. These community scientists then alert relevant agencies when they begin to see signs of a HAB developing.
Q: Are HABs worse now because of climate change?
A: If winters become milder, then that would extend the time-period favorable for freshwater HABs to occur in the Delta. Any phenomenon that increases one of these four factors—light, temperature, nutrients, and water-column dynamics—would increase the chance of HABs formation. Our water- and land-use policy and management decisions will be important in offsetting any potential climate impacts so we can minimize HAB formation California’s rivers, lakes, Delta and other waterways.
Ariel Rubissow Okamoto is both today’s editor-in-chief and the founding editor of ESTUARY magazine (1992-2001). She enjoys writing in-depth, silo-crossing stories about water, restoration, and science. She’s a co-author of a Natural History of San Francisco Bay (UC Press 2011), frequent contributor of climate change stories to Bay Nature magazine, and occasional essayist for publications like the San Francisco Chronicle (see her Portfolio here). In other lives, she has been a vintner, soccer mom, and waitress. She lives in San Francisco close to the Bay with her architect husband Paul Okamoto.
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Hothouse Earth
By Ariel Rubissow Okamoto
Photo by Megan Nguyen
Nothing could be stranger than sitting in the dark with thousands of suits and heels, watching a parade of promises to decarbonize from companies and countries large and small, reeling from the beauties of big screen rainforests and indigenous necklaces, and getting all choked up.
It was day two of the September 2018 Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco when I felt it.
At first I wondered if I was simply starstruck. Most of us labor away trying to fix one small corner of the planet or another without seeing the likes of Harrison Ford, Al Gore, Michael Bloomberg, Van Jones, Jerry Brown – or the ministers or mayors of dozens of cities and countries – in person, on stage and at times angry enough to spit. And between these luminaries a steady stream of CEOs, corporate sustainability officers, and pension fund managers promising percentages of renewables and profits in their portfolios dedicated to the climate cause by 2020-2050.
I tried to give every speaker my full attention: the young man of Vuntut Gwichin heritage from the edge of the Yukon’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge who pleaded with us not to enter his sacred lands with our drills and dependencies; all the women – swathed in bright patterns and head-scarfs – who kept punching their hearts. “My uncle in Uganda would take 129 years to emit the same amount of carbon as an American would in one year,” said Oxfam’s Winnie Byanyima.
“Our janitors are shutting off the lights you leave on,” said Aida Cardenas, speaking about the frontline workers she trains, mostly immigrants, who are excited to be part of climate change solutions in their new country.
The men on the stage, strutting about in feathers and pinstripes, spoke of hopes and dreams, money and power. “The notion that you can either do good or do well is a myth we have to collectively bust,” said New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy whose state is investing heavily in offshore wind farms.
“Climate change isn’t just about risks, it’s about opportunities,” said Blackrock sustainable investment manager Brian Deese.
But it wasn’t all these fine speeches that started the butterflies. Halfway through the second day of testimonials, it was a slight white-haired woman wrapped in an azure pashmina that pricked my tears. One minute she was on the silver screen with Alec Baldwin and the next she taking a seat on stage. She talked about trees. How trees can solve 30% of our carbon reduction problem. How we have to stop whacking them back in the Amazon and start planting them everywhere else. I couldn’t help thinking of Dr. Seuss and his truffala trees. Jane Goodall, over 80, is as fierce as my Lorax. Or my daughter’s Avatar.
Analyzing my take home feeling from the event I realized it wasn’t the usual fear – killer storms, tidal waves, no food for my kids to eat on a half-baked planet – nor a newfound sense of hope – I’ve always thought nature will get along just fine without us. What I felt was relief. People were actually doing something. Doing a lot. And there was so much more we could do.
As we all pumped fists in the dark, as the presentations went on and on and on because so many people and businesses and countries wanted to STEP UP, I realized how swayed I had let myself be by the doomsday news mill.
“We must be like the river, “ said a boy from Bangladesh named Risalat Khan, who had noticed our Sierra watersheds from the plane. “We must cut through the mountain of obstacles. Let’s be the river!”
Or as Harrison Ford less poetically put it: “Let’s turn off our phones and roll up our sleeves and kick this monster’s ass.”
4th California Climate Change Assessment Blues
by Isaac Pearlman
Since California’s last state-led climate change assessment in 2012, the Golden State has experienced a litany of natural disasters. This includes four years of severe drought from 2012 to 2016, an almost non-existent Sierra Nevada snowpack in 2014-2015 costing $2.1 billion in economic losses, widespread Bay Area flooding from winter 2017 storms, and extremely large and damaging wildfires culminating with this year’s Mendocino Complex fire achieving the dubious distinction of the largest in state history. California’s most recent climate assessment, released August 27th, predicts that for the state and the Bay Area, we can expect even more in the future.
The California state government first began assessing climate impacts formally in 2006, due to an executive order by Governor Schwarzenegger. California’s latest iteration and its fourth overall, includes a dizzying array of 44 technical reports; three topical studies on climate justice, tribal and indigenous communities, and the coast and ocean; as well as nine region-specific analyses.
The results are alarming for our state’s future: an estimated four to five feet of sea level rise and loss of one to two-thirds of Southern California beaches by 2100, a 50 percent increase in wildfires over 25,000 acres, stronger and longer heat waves, and infrastructure like airports, wastewater treatment plants, rail and roadways increasingly likely to suffer flooding.
For the first time, California’s latest assessment dives into climate consequences on a regional level. Academics representing nine California regions spearheaded research and summarized the best available science on the variable heat, rain, flooding and extreme event consequences for their areas. For example, the highest local rate of sea level rise in the state is at the rapidly subsiding Humboldt Bay. In San Diego county, the most biodiverse in all of California, preserving its many fragile and endangered species is an urgent priority. Francesca Hopkins from UC Riverside found that the highest rate of childhood asthma in the state isn’t an urban smog-filled city but in the Imperial Valley, where toxic dust from Salton Sea disaster chokes communities – and will only become worse as higher temperatures and less water due to climate change dry and brittle the area.
According to the Bay Area Regional Report, since 1950 the Bay Area has already increased in temperature by 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit and local sea level is eight inches higher than it was one hundred years ago. Future climate will render the Bay Area less suitable for our evergreen redwood and fir forests, and more favorable for tolerant chaparral shrub land. The region’s seven million people and $750 billion economy (almost one-third of California’s total) is predicted to be increasingly beset by more “boom and bust” irregular wet and very dry years, punctuated by increasingly intense and damaging storms.
Unsurprisingly, according to the report the Bay Area’s intensifying housing and equity problems have a multiplier affect with climate change. As Bay Area housing spreads further north, south, and inland the result is higher transportation and energy needs for those with the fewest resources available to afford them; and acute disparity in climate vulnerability across Bay Area communities and populations.
“All Californians will likely endure more illness and be at greater risk of early death because of climate change,” bluntly states the statewide summary brochure for California’s climate assessment. “[However] vulnerable populations that already experience the greatest adverse health impacts will be disproportionately affected.”
“We’re much better at being reactive to a disaster than planning ahead,” said UC Berkeley professor and contributing author David Ackerly at a California Adaptation Forum panel in Sacramento on August 27th. “And it is vulnerable communities that suffer from those disasters. How much human suffering has to happen before it triggers the next round of activity?”
The assessment’s data is publicly available online at “Cal-adapt,” where Californians can explore projected impacts for their neighborhoods, towns, and regions.
The results are alarming for our state’s future: an estimated four to five feet of sea level rise and loss of one to two-thirds of Southern California beaches by 2100, a 50 percent increase in wildfires over 25,000 acres, stronger and longer heat waves, and infrastructure like airports, wastewater treatment plants, rail and roadways increasingly likely to suffer flooding.