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Harmful Algal Blooms: Globally increasing impacts call for greater efforts towards management and mitigation
Dr. Gustaaf Hallegraeff, UTAS
Resumo:
Harmful algal blooms (HABs) range from water discolourations impacting on tourism, to catastrophic kills of finfish in aquaculture operations, to species producing potent neurotoxins that contaminate seafood and in extreme cases can kill humans. While microalgal blooms in a strict sense are completely natural phenomena (e.g. Captain Vancouver lost 5 crew from Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning in 1793), since the 1980s the impacts of HABs on public health, tourism, and fisheries have increased in frequency, intensity and geographic distribution. To a major extent this reflects increased scientific awareness. In other cases, algal bloom problems reflect increased utilisation of coastal waters for aquaculture and fisheries. The "Godzilla red tide" in Chile in March 2016 caused $800M loss to salmon aquaculture and coastal fisheries and generated significant social unrest. Eutrophication has rarely been invoked as a key causative factor. Other harmful species have been newly introduced via ship ballast water discharge (International Maritime Organisation's Ballast Water Convention) or exhibited significant range expansions in relationship to climate change (International Panel on Climate Change Global HAB Status Reports). Heightened scientific and regulatory attention has triggered the development of many new technologies (molecular probes, remote sensing) and approaches for monitoring (continuous plankton recorder) and management (clay flocculation) of algal bloom phenomena.
Informações sobre o Palestrante:
Gustaaf Hallegraeff is a Professor at the Institute of Marine and Antarctic Studies of the University of Tasmania in Australia. He has supervised 40 PhD students and worked on a wide range of HAB issues from shellfish toxins, climate change, ship’s ballast water to fish-killing algae. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, and winner of the 2004 Eureka Prize for Environmental Research and 2014 Yasumoto Life Time Achievement Award by the International Society for the Study of Harmful Algae.