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Brown Goo Making Waves on North Oregon Coast Again |
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Covering 180 miles of Oregon coast travel: Astoria, Seaside, Cannon Beach, Manzanita, Nehalem, Wheeler, Rockaway, Garibaldi, Tillamook, Oceanside, Pacific City, Lincoln City, Depoe Bay, Newport, Waldport, Yachats & Florence.
02/15/08
Secrets of the Season |
Strange-Colored Waves on Oregon Coast Not Pollution
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| Brown waves in Seaside (photo Tiffany Boothe, Seaside Aquarium) |
(Seaside, Oregon) - A run of brown waves on the north Oregon coast has tourists a little spooked and causing them to ask local businesses about it in large numbers.
It's not pollution. It's not algae. It's not an oil spill from a shipwreck, nor is it sewage or sludge of some sort. It’s actually a good thing.
It’s actually a form of phytoplankton causing all the raucous - the basic, bottom of the food chain in the ocean on which most all life depends. They’re called diatoms, and they are microscopic plant-like creatures that are actually responsible for most all sea foam you see on the beaches. They are about 100 micrometers long – or 1000 times the size of a virus. Still, they’re not visible with the naked eye.
Seaside’s Director of Tourism, Mikaela Norval, sent out a press release to media Thursday to circumvent any bad rumors that result from the mystifying sight. “Oil? Sewage? No, it’s just diatoms,” she said in the release.
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| Closeup of brown foam (photo Boothe) |
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This particular form of phytoplankton is so abundant right
now on the north coast that it’s causing really dark patches along
with very dark, brown chunks of foam in the Seaside area. It also creates
dark, oily-looking patches in the sand as well as large tracts of brown
foam and goo along the beaches.
“It’s a good thing,” said Keith Chandler, manager of
the Seaside Aquarium. “It’s a healthy thing. It’s just
a lot of diatoms.”
Chandler said it comes and goes with the tides this past week. Sometimes it’s more prominent, others it’s not as obvious.
When
diatoms get so abundant in the ocean, they may wash ashore during storms
or westerly winds. This usually happens early spring, mid summer, and
early fall. It’s another natural occurrence that can contribute
to the giant floating masses of brown foam. The recent storms of winter
agitated the surf and may have brought this stuff up from the depths a
bit more.
Tiffany Boothe, with the Seaside Aquarium, said the creatures leave behind residue after they scarf down the nitrates and phosphates, which creates more interesting scenery on the coast. “They leave behind carbohydrates, fats, proteins and vitamins,” Boothe said. “Their bodies also store oil to live on. If you look closely at the bubbles created by phytoplankton you will notice that they look as if they have oil in them, as in the photographs here.”
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| Brown waves at Seaside seen from above (courtesy Seaside Helicopters) |
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It’s often mistaken for oil or pollution, but it’s not. Tourists to the Oregon coast will undoubtedly vividly remember seeing dark, oily-looking patches on the beaches, often in great abundance. While occasionally this is an environmental problem, such as the oil along Waldport’s beaches during the New Carissa shipwreck debacle back in the late 90’s, it is rarely what it seems.
The brown diatom patches leave these dark stains on the beaches because of the materials in their bodies. “It’s not really so much of a stain as it is a lot of the stuff accumulates on the beaches,” Chandler said. “The stuff, like the brown bubbles, feels a little oily, but that doesn’t mean it is oil. It just comes from a lot of it piling on the beaches. The tide will come and clean it out. Just like a ketchup stain – it comes right out.”
When diatoms wash ashore, because they’re microscopic, they look like crude oil, said Boothe. “If you look very closely at a thin layer of the stuff you will see it is dark green, and not a crude oil at all.”
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| Massive amounts of brown goo in Seaside last spring |
Diatoms and other types of phytoplankton are also largely responsible for the regular sea foam you see on the coastline. Those bubbles that hit the beaches are from the breakdown of the skeletons of phytoplankton. High winds and heavy surf whip air into the water, and when combined with the dissolved organic matter from the phytoplankton, these help create the bubbles.
Everything
in the ocean feeds on diatoms and other plankton, either directly or indirectly.
Even the great baleen whales filter planktons and diatoms for part of
their diet.
Other wild sights are sometimes on tap because of another form of phytoplankton called dinoflagellates. These little creatures glow in the water at night, and on the beaches for a few hours after washing up on shore. It’s nicknamed “glowing sands” because they emit a faint, bluish, green glow when stepped on or disturbed. This is only visible in very dark conditions at night.
This phenomenon sometimes follows such high density diatom events as the north coast is experiencing now.
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