THE human cost of hurricanes such as Floyd, which lashed the east coast of
the US last week, may be huge, but algae flourish in their wake.
Marilyn Fogel of the Carnegie Institution of Washington and her colleagues
found that the photosynthetic activity of phytoplankton off the coast of North
Carolina increased fivefold in the four days after Hurricane Gordon in 1994. As
the researchers report in the latest issue of Limnology and
Oceanography (vol 44, p 1359), the activity was triggered by nutrients from
sediments and deeper waters stirred up by the storm.
鈥淭he influence of the hurricane on mixing reached as deep as 150 metres,鈥�
says Russell Cuhel of the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, a member of the
team. 鈥淚t鈥檚 likely that these events also stimulate productivity in open ocean
蝉测蝉迟别尘蝉.鈥�
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