Disastrous blooms
"florida Bay used to be full of sea grasses and corals, but now it is as good as a sewer pond,' observes Brian LaPointe, a marine biologist at Harbour Branch Oceanographic Institution in Fort Pierce, Florida. Chemicals from agricultural runoff have brought forth the transformation. LaPointe says that the dirty water has fed an explosion in algal blooms over the past few years and is now killing the region's reefs ( New Scientist, Vol 152, No 2055).
Recently, the us Environmental Protection Agency (epa) was called to study this