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THE WEIRS TIMES, Thursday, September 16, 2010 MYSTERIOUS SUBSTANCE IN ALTON BAY?


by Andrea LaMoreaux NH Lakes Education Director


“I have to tell you,” began


the caller, “the strangest thing happened up here in Alton Bay. The other day it looked like the water was completely covered with a green pollen-like substance, but the next day it was gone, all gone. It just disappeared, just like that.” The flabbergasted call-


er wanted to know if we at NH LAKES had any idea what the mysteri- ous substance causing the unsightly film on top of the water might have been. Knowing that Sep- tember is not a time we typically see pollen on our lakes, and always enjoy- ing investigating unusual lake phenomena, I eagerly started asking questions. “Did you get a good look at the substance? Did it look like thousands of small greenish-yellow balls or dots? Did it look like green tapioca? Did it look fuzzy? Did it smell? Did you col- lect a sample?” After receiving answers


to these simple questions, I had a strong hunch as to the identity of the myste-


Looking into a lake experiencing a Gloeotrichia bloom. Photo source: www.ecy.wa.gov/programs/eap/lakes/wq/ photos/gloeotri.html


rious substance. I called the New Hampshire De- partment of Environmen- tal Services’ Limnology Center to confirm my sus- picion—the mysterious substance the caller had seen blooming in Alton Bay was Gloeo.


What Is It? Gloeotrichia echinula- Active.Community.Ad.050110_Layout 1 5/12/2010 11:04 PM Page 1


ta (pronounced glee-oh- trick’ee-ah e-kin-u-la’ta, and more commonly re- ferred to simply as ‘Gloeo’) is a cyanobacterium that


is naturally found in many lakes. It contains a blue- green pigment and uti- lizes sunlight to make its energy, so it is often con- fused with being an alga. However, like bacteria and unlike algae, cyanobacte- ria cells do not have a nu- cleus, so it is scientifically classified as a bacterium. It can form large spheri- cal colonies that grow up to approximately 1/16 of an inch in diameter and have been said to look like pollen, tapioca, or


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A Gloeotrichia cell (which has been stained with a green dye) under a laboratory microscope. Photos source: microbiology. usgs.gov/image_gallery_cyanobacteria_gloeotrichia_sytox. html


fuzzy little balls floating in the top few feet of water. A colony typically has a yellow-green center with hundreds of surround- ing filaments protruding out from its core. Under a


microscope, it looks like a dandelion head. Gloeo ‘blooms’ (con-


spicuous masses of the organism which develop suddenly) are common in lakes worldwide and are often triggered by warm water temperatures, lots of sunlight, and avail- able nutrients (particu- larly phosphorus). Blooms most often occur in late summer or early fall. How- ever, while being a natural component in many of our lake ecosystems, and belonging to one of the oldest classes of organ- isms on Earth, Gloeo has only recently made its presence known in some of Northern New Eng- land’s relatively healthy and clear lakes. During the past five or six years, it has been seen blooming during September in some of New Hampshire’s larg- est lakes, including Lake Sunapee and now Lake Winnipesaukee.


How Does A Bloom Occur?


In order to understand


how a Gloeo bloom oc- curs, it’s helpful to un- See LAKES on 35


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