The thick coating of the “green sea lettuce” has hit the towns of Qingdao and Rizhao the hardest, requiring local officials to haul the mess away by the dump truck load.
People living in Qingdao have become used to seeing the luxurious green carpet on their coastline and don’t think a thing about it being there. The algae is harmless to humans, and for those who want to take a dip in the ocean, it’s just a matter of wading through the plants.
Many people come to Qingdao and Rizhao just to see and take pictures of the unusual phenomenon, and many more crowd the shallow waters, wading through the greenery. But there is a downside to the algae bloom. As the alga decomposes and starts to rot, hydrogen sulfide gas is released, leaving the area reeking of rotten eggs.
In 2013, the New York Times reported the Qingdao government removed 19,800 tons of algae. The alga blooms began appearing in 2007, and some years have been worse than others.
When the blooms are heavy, aquaculture suffers. Abalone, clam, and sea cucumber farms suffered more than $100 million in damage from a 2008 outbreak of the green algae. It is suspected that algae blooms are connected to pollution and increased seaweed farming in the province just south of Shandong.
And even though green algae blooms are seen worldwide, the yearly bloom in the Yellow sea is the world’s largest, growing to an estimated million tons of biomass annually.
The green alga is not really a sea lettuce. Its scientific name is Enteromorpha flexuosa. It is a filamentous light green alga found all over the world in shallow brackish or marine habitats. The word, “enteromorpha” literally means “intestine shaped.” This describes the hollow, tube-like filaments of the plant and is why its common name is “hollow green plant.”
