Clean-up under way to clear 'green goo' from Olympic sailing site

Stumble Upon

del.icio.us

Digg

Facebook

Print

Email

Speak Up

QINGDAO, China - China's latest Olympics nightmare is a vast algae bloom that covers one-third of the sea where the world's best sailors are supposed to be competing in just over a month. Athletes call it the blob, the carpet, the fairway.

Enlarge Photo

The Associated Press

A Chinese swimmer removes blue green algae from coastal waters in Qingdao, China yesterday. A little over a month before the start of the 2008 Olympic Games the venue for the sailing events in Qingdao has been invaded by a forest of blue green algae.

"We almost think of it as land," said Carrie Howe, a member of the U.S. team and her three-person squad's unofficial algae remover. During practice, she dips her hand into the goo three or four times an hour to remove it from the rudder.

When it collects shaggily on the boat's tow rope, she and her teammates refer to it as "the dog." They've named it Hickory.

Chinese officials are trying to make the stuff go away. Hundreds of soldiers cleaned it up by hand in a seaside park yesterday. About 10,000 ordinary citizens were doing the same along the shore, while more than 1,200 fishing and other boats hauled it in by net, the workers smiling and flashing the two-fingered victory sign to journalists.

"We all need to pitch in," said Gao Shaofan, a massage parlour employee who was stuffing the algae into plastic sacks with her co-workers. "This is the worst it's ever been that we know."

Chinese officials promised at a news conference yesterday that the Olympics competition area, all 49 square kilometres of it, will be clear of the algae before races begin Aug. 9.

"Actually, we don't have a backup," Qu Chun, the sailing competition manager, said to a small chorus of groans from coaches.

The sailing teams had already known Qingdao, a charming port on China's east coast known for its Tsingtao beer, would be a difficult venue. The lower-than-ideal winds. The stronger-than-ideal current. The soupy fog that sometimes keeps teams off the water.

Then came the algae, which one Chinese official at the news conference, Lu Zhenyu, called a "natural disaster." First detected in May, it recently swelled to stretches of up to a few kilometres long.

Chinese officials and some experts blamed it on a combination of factors including warmer seas, winds from the south and an "exotic" strain of algae from farther down the coast.

You could eat it if you want, they added, saying Japanese and Koreans do.

"In itself, it's not harmful," said Fei Xiugang, who described himself at the news conference as a seaweed expert. "It absorbs carbon dioxide. It actually cleans the water."

But Wang Liqing, a marine biology professor at Shanghai Ocean University, said in a telephone interview that the bloom could be caused by pollution, which deposits excessive nutrients in the water and causes algae to grow at abnormal rates. China's east coast is highly industrial.

Whatever the cause of the algae, the sailors have tried to describe it in not-so-terrible terms.

"A very new, very large variable," Howe said.

Chinese officials have appealed to Qingdao's civic pride -- and fishermen's wallets -- to fight the algae bloom as quickly as possible, with the goal of clearing the competition zone by July 15.

Already, more than 150 tonnes have been cleared away, said Zang Aimin, an executive board member of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games.