| On tens of sandy beaches of Brittany, a green seaweed (Ulva) blooms during spring and summer. In the sites where the proliferation is the most important, the total biomass amounted to 20 000 t of wet weight in 1997, at the time of maximum. These "green tides" occur every year in nearly the same locations. They have a very harmful impact on local tourism. In many communes, beached and rotting algae are collected and dumped (43 000 m 3 as a whole in 1997). The main development of biomass takes place between the surf zone and the bare sand.The outbreak requires three coexisting conditions : 1) a sandy beach gently sloping, 2) a weak residual current (i.e. once the tidal back and forth movement has been filtered), 3) a nitrogen loading, even moderate (ammonium... |
