The Ocean Research & Conservation Association (ORCA) announced today that the Kilroys water quality monitoring systems – deployed in the Indian River Lagoon watershed have revealed significant algae blooms in the tributaries and canals leading into Florida’s Indian River Lagoon (IRL). The first event that ORCA scientists noticed occurred in the C24 Canal where a comprehensive study of the canal is being conducted by ORCA with funding from Scott's Miracle-Gro.
"What we identified in the C-24 lead us to formulate a new hypothesis related to nutrient loading in the lagoon," said Dr. Edie Widder, ORCA CEO and Senior Scientist. "The breakthrough has to do with the number and frequency of algae blooms we’re seeing in the canals. This was unexpected because the traditional view has been that watersheds carry nutrients off the land from agriculture and urban lawns, gardens and septic tanks and out canals and tributaries into the lagoon where they fuel algae blooms. But what we’re seeing is that significant blooms are occurring first in the fresh water canals." Once these freshwater algae hit the brackish water in the lagoon they die and release their nutrients at the same time the dead cells settle out forming the layers of black mayonnaise – better known as muck – that is smothering the lagoon.
Once ORCA scientists saw the blooms occurring in the C24 Canal, they identified similar patterns in the other canals and tributaries where state funding has paid for 25 additional Kilroys to be deployed. The concern is that efforts that focus on just nutrient loads entering the lagoon in the water column may miss a very important factor in nutrient loading. Because algae consume nutrients, the nutrient levels measured in the water column coming out of the canals may be low even though they are reaching the estuary and IRL in the algae blooms carried by the freshwater.
"The 25 Kilroys deployed with state funding is the most comprehensive real-time, water-quality monitoring network in Florida and it’s proving what I always believed would be true, said Widder, "that once we were able to monitor on this kind of scale we would learn all kinds of critical information that is needed to figure out how we’re going to clean up the lagoon."
The ORCA Kilroy™, the ORCA Fast Assessment of Sediment Toxicity (FAST™) and the ORCA Sentinel programs provide information on water characteristics and toxicity that when combined can be used to determine sources of non-point source pollution in coastal and estuary waters kilroy data is available on-line at www.teamorca.org.
