China's Yellow Sea turns green with algal bloom from pollution

The algal bloom in China has turned the Yellow Sea into green, the cause of which has been attributed to agricultural and industrial pollution.

According to the Guardian, city officials had to use bulldozers to remove 7,335 tonnes of the green growth from the beaches of Qingdao.

The growth of algae has become an annual occurrence in the region over the past six years, however, this year's incident has swathed 28 900 sq km, twice as much as the previous biggest bloom in 2008.

According to the report, the algal bloom, which is not toxic to humans or animals, can potentially harm the marine life and change the ecology of the environment beneath it as it blocks sunlight from entering the ocean and sucks oxygen from the water suffocating marine life.

University of Cambridge and EnAlgae Project researcher Dr Brenda Parker said that the Chinese bloom may be linked to industrial pollution as algal blooms often follow a massive discharge of phosphates or nitrates into the water.

Parker further said that the explosion of the algae would probably be an indicator that something is unbalanced in the ecosystem adding that the 2009 example algal bloom on the Brittany coast was a similar example of a human-induced algal bloom, the report added.