[Coral-List] Cyanobacteria outbreak

[Chuanmin Hu]

Actually cyanobacteria blooms are quite common in subtropic and tropic 
oceans. Here is a 600km x 600 km image showing the bloom mats just south 
of Fiji Island, South Pacific:
http://optics.marine.usf.edu/~hu/scratch/tmp7/MODIS.2010291.021000.fiji.AFAI.rgb.png

Chuanmin
On 11/5/2012 10:17 AM, Eugene Shinn wrote:
> Dear Listers, Experiments by DR. Peter Swart at RSMAS and Dr. Valerie
> Paul at Smithsonian...and others have shown experimentally that a
> major stimulus for cyanobacteria growth (and other algae) is iron.
> Since African dust is about 6 percent iron it is no surprise that
> algae are proliferating, especially in the Central America region
> which receives the bulk of the dust that crosses the Atlantic.  I
> think most of you have read about the iron fertilization experiments?
> Agreed most of the iron is not in the bio available form but as soon
> as it becomes reduced in anoxic sediment it becomes bioavailable.
> And, the other important ingredient is phosphate.  Gene