the "Headline That Caught My Attention or the WTF" thread

Turkey launches effort to vacuum up thick layer of ‘sea snot’ choking its coast​

pressherald.com/2021/06/10/turkey-launches-massive-effort-to-vacuum-up-thick-layer-of-sea-snot-choking-its-coast/

By Antonia Noori Farzan June 10, 2021
An aerial photo of Pendik port in Istanbul taken June 4 shows with a huge mass of marine mucilage, a thick, slimy substance made up of compounds released by marine organisms, in Turkey's Marmara Sea.

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan pledged Tuesday to rid the Sea of Marmara of the “scourge” of marine mucilage, as workers embarked on a massive effort to vacuum up the foul-looking substance that has been plaguing coastal communities.

Thick layers of the viscous, slimy mucus colloquially known as “sea snot” have been wreaking havoc along Turkey’s coastline for months, choking harbors and clogging up fishermen’s nets while suffocating marine life.

Scientists say that untreated sewage, agricultural runoff and other forms of pollution are responsible for the phenomenon, but that warming water temperatures caused by climate change appear to be making it even worse.

The unappetizing muck has become a source of national embarrassment and rising anger. On Tuesday, Erdoğan vowed to designate the Sea of Marmara, which is between the Black and Aegean Seas, as a conservation area. Meanwhile, government officials launched a massive cleanup operation, using tanker trucks with suction hoses that park along the shoreline and effectively act as giant vacuum cleaners. Similar methods have been used to remove toxic blue-green algae from waterways in Florida.

“My fear is, if this expands to Black Sea … the trouble will be enormous. We need to take this step without delay,” Erdoğan said, according to the BBC.

Turkey’s environment minister, Murat Kurum, said Tuesday that hundreds of workers would be deployed to every province that borders the Sea of Marmara in the largest marine cleanup effort that the country has ever seen. To prevent the problem from reoccurring, officials will take steps to reduce pollution and improve wastewater treatment, he said.

While some scientists applauded the plan, others said that the Turkish government should have cracked down on pollution decades ago.

The number of people living in Istanbul and other cities along the Sea of Marmara has exploded, marine biologist Mert Gökalp told Turkish newspaper Cumhuriyet. “Why did we go on with our lives without thinking about where our wastes go?”

Marine scientists have also warned that merely removing the top layer of “sea snot” will not solve the problem, because thick bands of mucus are floating below the water’s surface and settling on the sea floor, where they pose a hazard to coral and other marine life. It is not clear how the underwater mucus could be removed, but officials in Istanbul suggested last month that it might be necessary to bring in dredging boats.

The mucus that has been surrounding marinas and washing up on beaches in Turkey is secreted by phytoplankton populations that grow to out-of-control numbers when high levels of nitrogen and phosphorous upset the ocean’s ecological balance. Though the mucus itself is not necessarily dangerous, it can carry toxic microorganisms and dangerous bacteria such as E. coli, and authorities have warned against touching it.

Mucus removed from the Sea of Marmara will be trucked to waste disposal facilities, officials said, though some communities are experimenting with drying it out on land to see whether it can be used as a fertilizer or animal feed.
 

Massachusetts lobster diver injured when caught in whale’s mouth​

pressherald.com/2021/06/11/massachusetts-lobster-diver-injured-when-caught-in-whales-mouth/

Associated PressJune 11, 2021

PROVINCETOWN, Mass. — A commercial lobster diver was seriously injured Friday morning when he was caught in the mouth of a humpback whale off the coast of Cape Cod, his sister said.

Michael Packard, 56, of Wellfleet, was taken to Cape Cod Hospital with at least one broken leg, his sister, Cynthia Packard, told the Cape Cod Times.

“He was swallowed by the whale, he was in his mouth for about 20 seconds,” she told the newspaper in a phone interview.

Cynthia Packard got details of the encounter off of Provincetown from her brother’s crewmate, who at first feared it was a great white shark.

Charles “Stormy” Mayo, a senior scientist and whale expert at the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown, told the newspaper that such human-whale encounters are rare.

Humpbacks are not aggressive and Mayo thinks it was an accidental encounter while the whale was feeding on fish, likely sand lance.
 

Glacier Blood? Watermelon Snow? Whatever It’s Called, Snow Shouldn’t Be So Red.​

Researchers are starting to investigate the species that drive alpine algal blooms to better understand their causes and effects.

Glacier Blood? Watermelon Snow? Whatever It’s Called, Snow Shouldn’t Be So Red.

Winter through spring, the French Alps are wrapped in austere white snow. But as spring turns to summer, the stoic slopes start to blush. Parts of the snow take on bright colors: deep red, rusty orange, lemonade pink. Locals call this “sang de glacier,” or “glacier blood.” Visitors sometimes go with “watermelon snow.”

In reality, these blushes come from an embarrassment of algae. In recent years, alpine habitats all over the world have experienced an uptick in snow algae blooms — dramatic, strangely hued aggregations of these normally invisible creatures.

While snow algae blooms are poorly understood, that they are happening is probably not a good sign. Researchers have begun surveying the algae of the Alps to better grasp what species live there, how they survive and what might be pushing them over the bleeding edge. Some of their initial findings were published this week in Frontiers in Plant Science.

Tiny yet powerful, the plantlike bacteria we call algae are “the basis of all ecosystems,” said Adeline Stewart, an author of the study who worked on it as a doctoral student at Grenoble Alpes University in France. Thanks to their photosynthetic prowess, algae produce a large amount of the world’s oxygen, and form the foundation of most food webs.

But they sometimes overdo it, multiplying until they throw things out of balance. This can cause toxic red tides, scummy freshwater blooms — or unsettling glacier blood.

The red-colored Sanguina algae, shown under a microscope, taken from a sample of “watermelon snow.”

The red-colored Sanguina algae, shown under a microscope, taken from a sample of “watermelon snow.”Credit...ALPALGA

While it’s unclear exactly what spurs the blooms, the color — often red, but sometimes green, gray or yellow — comes from pigments and other molecules that the snow algae use to protect themselves from ultraviolet light. These hues absorb more sunlight, causing the underlying snow to melt more quickly. This can change ecosystem dynamics and hasten the shrinking of glaciers.

Inspired by increasing reports of the phenomenon, researchers at several alpine institutes decided to turn their attention from algae species in far-flung habitats to those “that grow next door,” said Eric Maréchal, the head of a plant physiology lab at Grenoble Alpes University and a leader of the project.

Because so many different types of algae can live and bloom in the mountains, the researchers began with a census in parts of the French Alps to find out what grows where. They took soil samples from five peaks, spread over various altitudes, and searched for algal DNA.

They found that many species tend to prefer particular elevations, and have most likely evolved to thrive in the conditions found there. One key genus, fittingly named Sanguina, grows only above 6,500 feet.

The researchers also brought some species back to the lab to investigate their potential bloom triggers. Algae blooms occur naturally — the first written observation of glacier blood came from Aristotle, who guessed that the snow had grown hairy red worms from lying around too long.

But human-generated factors can worsen such outbursts and make them more frequent. Extreme weather, unseasonably warm temperatures and influxes of nutrients from agricultural and sewage runoff all play a role in freshwater and ocean algae blooms.

Many species of algae tend to prefer particular elevations and have most likely evolved to thrive in the conditions found there. Sanguina, for instance, grows only above 6,500 feet.

Many species of algae tend to prefer particular elevations and have most likely evolved to thrive in the conditions found there. Sanguina, for instance, grows only above 6,500 feet. Credit...ALPALGA

To see if the same was true for glacier blood, the researchers subjected the algae to surpluses of nutrients, like nitrogen and phosphorus. While they have not found anything significant so far, they plan to continue this line of testing, Dr. Stewart said.

The limits of DNA sampling mean that even this study gives an incomplete picture of what’s living in and under the snow, said Heather Maughan, a microbiologist and research scholar at the Ronin Institute in New Jersey who was not involved. Still, it revealed the “incredible diversity” of alpine algae — underscoring how little we know about them, as well as their potential to “serve as beacons of ecosystem change,” she said.

In the coming years, the researchers will keep track of how species distributions shift over time, which may shed light on the overall health of the ecosystem, Dr. Stewart said. They will also try to establish whether temperature patterns correlate with blooms, and begin to compare species compositions in white versus colorful snow. Eventually, they hope to decipher the blood-red message.

“There’s so little that we know,” she said. “We need to dig deeper.”
 
May be the first, but certainly not the last we see of these...

Large nationwide mall owner files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy​

pressherald.com/2021/06/14/large-nationwide-mall-owner-files-for-chapter-11-bankruptcy/

By Jeremy Hill and Eliza Ronalds-HannonJune 14, 2021

Washington Prime Group Inc., a real estate investment trust that operates enclosed malls and strip centers across the U.S., filed for bankruptcy after the COVID-19 pandemic drove away shoppers.

The Chapter 11 filing in Houston lets Washington Prime stay in business while it restructures its debts in a deal that it reached with certain creditors, according to the bankruptcy petition. The company, with assets estimated at $4 billion and debt of almost $3.5 billion, secured a bankruptcy loan of up to $100 million to fund operations during court proceedings.

Rent collections dried up and tenants filed for bankruptcy or went out of business as the pandemic spread around the nation in 2020.

The Columbus, Ohio-based company, which has about 100 locations, began negotiating with its creditors last year and skipped a $23 million bond interest payment in February. Creditors had been extending a forbearance agreement amid the debt talks.

Still, Washington Prime’s share price surged in recent weeks as it was whipped into the frenzy of trading around meme stocks popular among retail investors and on Reddit message boards. The stock rose as high as $6.98 in June, from a price closer to $2 earlier this year. Trading was halted on Monday as investors digested news of the bankruptcy.

Washington Prime aims to deleverage its balance sheet by nearly $950 million, according to a company statement. The plan includes swapping unsecured notes for equity, a $190 million paydown of its revolving credit and term loan facilities and a $325 million equity rights offering.

The plan has support from creditors that hold about 73 percent of the principal outstanding of secured corporate debt and 67 percent of the unsecured notes. Bloomberg News previously reported that Washington Prime was weighing a bankruptcy filing as talks faltered.

The case is Washington Prime Group Inc., 21-31948, U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas (Houston).
 
Which reminds me that (Amazon) Prime Day(s) are coming soon, June 21-22 !

(Our local mall didn't need the help of the virus to continue to go down the tubes. It does attract teens to shop(lift) but few others.
 
Which reminds me that (Amazon) Prime Day(s) are coming soon, June 21-22 !

(Our local mall didn't need the help of the virus to continue to go down the tubes. It does attract teens to shop(lift) but few others.
Amazon is becoming the death of fixed retail . They are not even always the best price. I try to avoid using them like the plague.
 

:oops:

"It is dangerous, but the police are the public, the public are the police," she said. "There's women and men alike … brothers, sisters, uncles, aunties, we're just regular people but we put that uniform on to help protect."

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Amazon is becoming the death of fixed retail . They are not even always the best price. I try to avoid using them like the plague.
So true although I definitely do not avoid them. I always write their price down and then shop online some more. sometimes Walmart or Ebay beat them, sometimes not. I bought my Tsunami Slimwave from Fishermans Friend in Joisey, Best price, free shipping and might not have paid tax ! The plastic and silicone stuff I make my lures with- definitely Ebay. But Amazon? Bought peep sights and scope covers from them- one size off- easy return by going to local Kohls. For a virus Christmastime Amazon was there for us !
 
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