Red sea in Shenzhen

While blue-green algae attacks the Tai Lake in Wuxi in the northeast of China, Shenzhen and Hong Kong are dealing with red algae in the seas.

Red tide of algae hits Shenzhen coastal area

By Jonathan Yeung (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-06-07 07:03

SHENZHEN: A marine algal bloom commonly known as "red tide" has returned to Shenzhen bay, causing serious pollution and killing off many marine plants.

A red tide is caused by a buildup of marine plankton that consume oxygen while releasing toxic substances into the water, killing off fish and plant life.

"This is the biggest red tide that has ever appeared off the city's coast," said Zhou Kai, a marine expert with Shenzhen's municipal sea fishery environment monitoring station.

He said this marked the third time this year a red tide had appeared off Shenzhen. The first appeared near Shenzhen bay in January and another appeared near Dameisha last month.

Based on the monitoring station's observations, the most recent red tide is mainly west of Shenzhen. The infected area is about 50 sq km. Sea to the east of Shenzhen appears to be free of the plankton at this stage.

"We strongly urge the public to stay away from the polluted sea areas and not eat sea products from there," Zhou said.

A red tide has also been spotted near neighboring Hong Kong in the past few days, with as many as six beaches in Tunmen and Qingshan Bay being affected.

The government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region has reminded people not to swim in polluted areas.

Zhou said the red tide would recede if it rained. "But the weather remains sunny and hot, which means the red tide is here to stay for now," he added.

He said the recent weather conditions were favorable to the plankton.

A lot of rain has fallen off Shenzhen's coast in recent months, pulling nitrogen and phosphorous up from the sea bottom. Plankton feed off these nutrients.

This, compounded with the hot weather, has helped the plankton breed and spread, Zhou said. He said the red tide would not cause major economic losses because very few people were breeding sea fish in the affected areas.

"But the foul smell of the dying algae will be unpleasant for the people living in the affected areas, and the tide's annoying red color will also mar the pleasant view," Zhou said.

Blue-green stinky Wuxi

China's environmental problems continue to exacerbate. And, of course, the Chinese are detaining and jailing environmental activists.

Near Shanghai, the city of Wuxi, from scmp.com:

For hundreds of years, Wuxi, on the edge of Tai Lake, was the envy of the nation. In the heart of the Yangtze River delta and known as "the land of fish and rice", it was bestowed with fertile land and abundant waterways, and was also home to famous poets, painters and industrialists.

Since Tuesday, however, the city has become a stinking hell for its five million residents as a blue-green algal bloom from the heavily polluted lake contaminated the city's tap water, making it foul-smelling and undrinkable.

After scrambling for six days with emergency measures, Wuxi officials said yesterday the tap water was drinkable. But the residents, who have relied on bottled water for drinking and cooking, have every reason to be suspicious. Xinhua has reported that after the usual cleaning aids such as activated carbon failed to remove the odour, the city adopted what Mayor Mao Xiaoping called "a bold move" by pouring huge amounts of potassium permanganate (Condy's crystals) into water-intake points. This allowed the strong oxidising agent to remove foul-smelling matter from the pipes.

But Xinhua failed to explain that potassium permanganate is hazardous and can be a health risk.

As the Wuxi officials brazenly claimed credit for winning the battle against the water crisis, none of them yet had the decency to apologise to the suffering residents.

All of them have blamed factors beyond their control - higher-than-normal temperatures that helped to foster the growth of the algae, a lack of rain and favourable wind conditions, and the lowest water level in the lake in five decades.

In fact, the fundamental cause of the crisis is the lake's heavy pollution - as several mainland environmentalists have repeatedly warned the authorities in the past decade. Wu Lihong , 39, is one of them. He has spent large sums of his own money over the past 16 years collecting evidence of pollution at Tai Lake, the mainland's third-largest freshwater lake, and petitioning the local authorities to shut down the polluters.

Now, with a water crisis on its hands, one would imagine any government that claims to "put the people first" would give Wu a medal of honour and make him a hero.

Instead, Wu, known as the Tai Lake anti-pollution warrior in overseas media, is languishing in jail and awaiting trial on June 12 on trumped-up charges of blackmail.

A farmer turned businessman who grew up in Zhoutie town in Yixing - a small, booming industrial city under the jurisdiction of Wuxi - Wu witnessed the lake turn into a cesspit. He then made it a personal crusade to petition authorities to shut down more than 2,000 chemical factories in Yixing that spewed toxic pollutants into the lake every day.

Bypassing the local bureaucracy and filing reports to higher-level government officials has led to limited success - he is welcomed, even liked by many central government officials and national media in Beijing.

In 2005, he was chosen as one of mainland's top 10 environmentalists and honoured at a ceremony in the Great Hall of the People.

But he incurred the wrath of local officials and has been constantly harassed by local policemen, officials and thugs.

He was arrested again in April on charges of blackmail after the local officials set a trap for him. They offered him 40,000 yuan for a mission to attract investment from other mainland cities, and then laid charges of blackmailing the authorities.

His lawyer, Zhu Xiaoyan , said that Wu had told her that he was whipped while in custody, and she was not allowed to see him until more than six weeks after his arrest.

Like Gao Yaojie , a retired Henan doctor who refused to keep quiet about Aids, Wu has refused to stand down despite the threat of jail. The mainland leadership should learn from the fiasco of trying to muzzle Ms Gao and release Wu immediately.