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In the Field: Tracing sources of brown tide

Jennifer Smith | mailto:[email-masked]&subject=In%20the%20Field:%20Tracing%20sources%20of%20brown%20tide
July 6, 2008

The sun broke through the mist and turned an overcast summer morning on Quantuck Bay into something out of a picture book: blue skies over waterfront homes with private docks where herons perched.

But something wasn't right. Instead of being clear, the water sloshing around the dock pilings was a murky olive, thanks to a type of algae known as brown tide that had bloomed across the bay.

Blooms like this one can kill juvenile hard clams and make life difficult for adult shellfish. Studies show hard clams stop feeding when brown tide cell counts reach 35,000 cells per milliliter of water. "This is where we've seen cell counts of brown tide upwards of a million cells per liter," said Matthew Harke, a Stony Brook University graduate student who came out on the research vessel Peconic to collect water samples from Quantuck Bay.

Brown tide is not known to be toxic to humans. But in high concentrations, algal blooms shade out the bay bottom. Without light, eelgrass that provides habitat for fish and shellfish will die, and fish that rely on visual cues to catch prey will leave, Harke said. "If it's dense enough," he said, "the clams will shut down, and they won't even feed."

Unwanted guest

Brown tide first hit Long Island in 1985, decimating the scallop population in Peconic Bay. More than two decades later, it keeps coming back, returning every few years as waters warm. This year, brown tide has clouded South Shore waters from South Oyster Bay to western Shinnecock Bay, a distance of about 60 miles.

As health officials track the algae's progression, a research team led by Stony Brook University professor Christopher Gobler is conducting experiments to better understand how brown tide thrives and behaves. That morning, Harke and four other students were on a mission to fill nine 300-liter plastic containers with water from Quantuck Bay. The boat passed under Ponquogue Bridge and headed west past Tiana Bay. It moved at a stately 5 miles per hour through the Quogue Canal before dropping anchor in Quantuck Bay.

First, students recorded the water conditions. They clocked the temperature, then plunged a white device called a Secchi disk into the bay to measure visibility: 0.7 meters, or a little more than two feet. At the back of the boat, doctorate student Florian Koch held a hose steady, filling the barrels with greenish water that a pump sucked up from the bay through a deck hatch.

Back at the university's Southampton Marine Station, the brown tide water will be stored in floating containers in the bay to mimic natural conditions. Students will introduce various potential predators - clams, slipper shell snails, other types of plankton - to see which ones eat Aureococcus anophagefferens, the organism that causes brown tide.

Growth experiment

On the bow, Harke and graduate student Theresa Hattenrath knelt to fill smaller jugs for the research. Koch plans to introduce vitamins into the water to see how substances such as nitrogen and phosphorus affect the growth rate of brown tide. Scientists think Aureococcus anophagefferens may have an advantage over other algae because it can use organic and inorganic nitrogen to grow, while most thrive only on inorganic nitrogen. "We're trying to understand the organism and why it does what it does," Harke said of the work.

It took a little over half an hour to gather all the samples. Then the boat headed back, moving even more slowly through the canal because of the extra weight. At the marina, some students pumped the brown tide water into floating dockside barrels. Harke hustled inside to the center's wet lab to scrub down slipper shell snails harvested on a previous run. If they're hungry enough, the snails just might hold the clues to controlling brown tide.

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Related topic galleries: Colleges and Universities, Research, Stony Brook University, Peconic Bay, Long Island, Shinnecock Bay

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