{"id":237247,"date":"2026-07-07T04:37:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T04:37:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/237247\/"},"modified":"2026-07-07T04:37:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T04:37:13","slug":"why-the-great-lakes-economy-depends-on-lake-eries-algae","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/237247\/","title":{"rendered":"Why the Great Lakes economy depends on Lake Erie’s algae"},"content":{"rendered":"

Toxic algal blooms are a big enough threat that Lake Erie is dotted with little buoys, constantly monitoring how much algae is in the water. It takes several minutes in a zippy speedboat to travel far enough offshore to see one of the buoys up close.<\/p>\n

On the way, one of the scientists in the boat captures a jarful of water and holds it up to the light. It looks clear enough to drink.<\/p>\n

But then she throws a net with a filter on the end overboard, and drags it through roughly 1,000 gallons of water. The remaining liquid she pulls out of the filter is a murky yellow-green, with lots of tiny zooplankton buzzing around.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s summer \u2014 the water temperatures are near 70,\u201d said Ed Verhamme, the captain of the day\u2019s voyage and a principal and senior engineer at LimnoTech. \u201cWe’re certainly catching a lot of living stuff in the water. \u2026 What we don’t want is the harmful algae.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Water<\/p>\n

Verhamme says in a really bad year, it’s possible to see algae like what’s in this jar without needing to use a filter.<\/p>\n

Caleigh Wells\/Marketplace<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the kind of algae that can cause<\/a> diarrhea, vomiting and rashes. And that\u2019s what his company helps monitor. <\/p>\n

Verhamme keeps driving until he arrives at a buoy. He pulls up the data it\u2019s capturing on his phone and relays the good news.<\/p>\n

\u201cYep, really nothing going on out there right now,\u201d he said. \u201cThese are very low readings.\u201d<\/p>\n

The recipe for high readings includes extremely heavy rainy periods, which pull nutrient-rich agricultural runoff into the lake, followed by extremely dry and sunny periods that help the algae form. <\/p>\n

This year hasn\u2019t been very extreme, which is why NOAA said it\u2019ll be a moderate year for harmful algae<\/a>. Verhamme says an especially bad year, like 2014<\/a>, when the algae contaminated Toledo\u2019s water supply, would show readings 20-25 times higher than this. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat’s noticeable scum,\u201d he said. \u201cThe water looks like paint, really.\u201d<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s moderate forecast isn\u2019t just good news for Lake Erie\u2019s ecosystem. It means algae won\u2019t tank whole chunks of the Great Lakes economy<\/a> this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don’t even know where to begin to calculate the economic impact of something like that \u2014 if Greater Cleveland had to be under a Do Not Drink Water advisory \u2014 what would happen,\u201d said Alex Margevicius, commissioner of Cleveland\u2019s water division.<\/p>\n

Lake Erie is the main source of drinking water for Northeast Ohio, but the cost of algal blooms is calculated in more than just bottled water and healthcare bills.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn this $6 trillion economy, the Great Lakes Basin is a huge tourism economy,\u201d said Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne. \u201cLake Erie is the Walleye Capital of the World. \u2026 They come here to fish. There’s fishing tournaments and just recreationalists.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the algae gets bad, it sucks up all the oxygen in the water, which causes mass fish kills. That isn\u2019t a great feature in the Walleye Capital of the World.<\/p>\n

And a hit to the tourism industry can have ripple effects.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat’s not only going to impact the people who are going to recreate, but you have to think about the hotels where people stay,\u201d said Scott Hardy, an earth scientist with the Ohio State University. \u201cYou have to think about the gas stations that fill up the cars that people drive to the water.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hardy said climate change is making that extreme weather \u2014 and the algal blooms that follow<\/a> it \u2014 more common. But he also says we\u2019re getting better at mitigating the runoff that causes the blooms in the first place.<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Toxic algal blooms are a big enough threat that Lake Erie is dotted with little buoys, constantly monitoring…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":237248,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[33569,136,138,137,4188,260,32339],"class_list":["post-237247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-erie","tag-algae","tag-erie","tag-erie-headlines","tag-erie-news","tag-fishing","tag-lake-erie","tag-tourism-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237247\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}