Now, for your summer thrill entertainment, ATTACK OF THE KILLER ALGAE!<\/p>\n
Our story begins, as many comic book plots do, with evil German scientists. \u00a0The Stuttgart Zoo first cultivated Caulerpa taxifolia, a beautiful bright green seaweed, for use in its aquarium.\u00a0 For over twenty years, the plant was exposed to huge doses of ultraviolet light and nasty chemicals. \u00a0In the 1980\u2019s, a small sample was given to the Oceanographic Museum in Monaco (then headed by \u2013 of all people \u2013 Jacques Cousteau) where it flourished.\u00a0 One day, while the Museum was cleaning its tanks, it dumped the waste water into the Mediterranean. \u00a0And soon the killer algae was on the loose.<\/p>\n
In 1984, Alexandre Meinesz, a professor of biology at the University of Nice, warned the French government about a small patch of slime he had found at the shore.\u00a0 But\u2026nobody\u2026listened.\u00a0 Soon the beast was spreading across the Riviera.\u00a0 Fisherman reported their nets were becoming coated with thick green goo. \u00a0Shellfish beds have been smothered, motorboats have been gummed up, scuba divers have been slimed. . The stuff is toxic to fish, so they can\u2019t eat it.\u00a0 Nothing can slow it down. The French Navy was called in, and proved as hopeless at fighting the beast as you would expect the French Navy to be. \u00a0The killer algae kept spreading, and now covers 10,000 acres off the coasts of Italy, France, Spain and Croatia.<\/p>\n
And then it came here.\u00a0 In 2000 the killer algae was spotted in the waters off San Diego and Huntington Harbor.\u00a0 Gnarly!\u00a0 Scientists have fought the beast with black plastic tarps to cut off the sunlight, and heavy applications of chlorine, with some success.\u00a0 But then they discovered the mutant seaweed can grow asexually (oh, those German scientists). Just a single cell of the stuff can grow almost overnight into a huge colony.\u00a0 And now reports of killer algae are popping up all over the globe.<\/p>\n
Can anything stop it? \u00a0Well, here\u2019s a solution worthy of a monster movie:\u00a0 SEA SLUGS! Researchers have found a slug, Elysia subornata, that can stick its nose into the algae and literally suck the life out of it. \u00a0The slug has an enzyme which neutralizes the algae\u2019s evil poison. \u00a0Early tests have found the slugs to be effective, but unfortunately they can\u2019t survive the cold waters of the Mediterranean. \u00a0So they can keep the monster at bay, but they can\u2019t wipe it out.<\/p>\n
Who needs Hollywood with a storyline like this? \u00a0KILLER ALGAE vs. SEA SLUGS!!\u00a0 Fighting it out in an ecosystem near you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Now, for your summer thrill entertainment, ATTACK OF THE KILLER ALGAE! Our story begins, as many comic book plots do, with evil German scientists. \u00a0The Stuttgart Zoo first cultivated Caulerpa taxifolia, a beautiful bright green seaweed, for use in its aquarium.\u00a0 For over twenty years, the plant was exposed to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[40,378,506,639,1100,1126],"class_list":["post-294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-4","tag-algae","tag-ecology","tag-goo","tag-jacques-cousteau","tag-see-slugs","tag-slime"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}