If you were near Boston Harbor over Fourth of July, you may have notices a stream of brown stuff in the water – that almost resembled raw sewage. But fear not, according to Save the Harbor, that brown stuff was actually a diatomacious algae bloom not anything harmful.
What exactly is that?
The brown froth comes from a diatom bloom where the diatoms produce mucus that clumps together to form the “floc” people witnessed in the Harbor. According to Dr. Andrea Rex of the MWRA, the diatom is a kind of phytoplankton found in temperate latitudes during late spring and summer.
To learn more about the diatom bloom – you can read an interesting blog on the Save the Harbor website here!
If you are concerned about something you see in the sea around Boston Harbor, send an email to [email protected] and they’ll get back to you!
Photo via Save the Harbor