Red Tide In Yellow Sea Rolls In As Beijing Countdown To The Olympic Games Starts

As the city of Qingdao in China prepares to host the sailing regatta for the Olympics thousands of people are in force to clear an algae bloom that could impede the competitions.

There is an all out effort to clear up the algae by the middle of July in Qingdao with as many as 20,000 people working on the project. There are 1,000 boats scooping the algae out of the Yellow Sea. Xinhua, the official news agency in China reports that a third of the waters that are expected to be used during the games are covered in the algae. The condition of water quality has been a large concern for the sailing events for some time. One of those concerns is that many of China's coastal cities dump untreated sewage into the sea. There are also often high levels of nitrates from runoff waters from both agricultural and industrial chemicals combining in the sea. These very nitrates are a cause of red tides of algae that often bloom along the coastline of China. Officials in Qingdao deny that runoff waters are the cause of this year's red tide. They are blaming Mother Nature's increased rainfall and warming waters in the Yellow Sea. Algae now blooms on over 5,000 square miles in the sea. Yuan Zhiping, an official with the Qingdao Olympic Sailing Committee stated on Sunday that his government plans to block the algae from the Olympic sailing areas with a fence that is 30 miles long.

"I believe we will make sure the Olympics sailing area is clean by July 15 through our efforts, and make sure the Olympics sailing goes smoothly," Yuan said, according to the Shandong News Web site.

Photographs coming from the area show wooden boats overflowing with algae collected from the sea. The state's media is reporting that 100,000 tons of the algae has already been removed from the waters. That algae will be transported and used as feed for pigs and other farm animals.