Eyesore on Saipan beach Dead algae take toll on island’s majestic seashore

As she walked near the pathway along Beach Road, Marcy, a Saipan resident, noticed the abundance of brownish plant-like stuff on the shallow waters of the beach.

She quickly reacted with a grin and said, “Of course not!”, when asked if she would like to swim there, which would have been refreshing on a hot, sunny day. “It looks dirty,” she added.

What Marcy actually saw were dead algae that have invaded Saipan’s beaches stretching from across the pathway along Beach Road to the San Jose area.

Division of Environmental Quality marine biologist Peter Houk, said the abundance of algae indicates the quality of water on the beach. If the algae are abundant, it means that there are a lot of nutrients, he explained.

“Normally, they grow offshore,” Houk said. But the abundance of algae near the shoreline was actually pushed by the waves when there was a typhoon that passed by north of Saipan a few weeks ago. “They’re actually dead.”

The big patches of algae that extend from the shoreline by as much as 40 to 50 feet provide an eyesore not only to beach lovers. Beyond their brownish color is the stinky odor. “It just smells like decaying,” Houk said.

“It has been a problem, unless you clean the storm water before discharging it to the ocean,” the marine biologist said. “The best thing you can do is to spread them out and bury them [under] the sand. You will allow them to decompose naturally.”

This approach, however, would take two to four weeks before the beach is cleaned, and it would take a lot of efforts to spread out these large patches of algae.

In the past, he said, government agencies that include the Department of Public Works, the Marinas Visitors Authority, and the Office of the Mayor of Saipan have pooled efforts to get rid of these algae fast, especially because the island’s beaches are one of the CNMI’s selling point to support its tourism-reliant economy.

Storm water contributes much nutrients to the sea, which support the abundant growth of algae. Among the common nutrients carried by storm water are phosphate and nitrate. Phosphate is used as an ingredient of detergent soap, while nitrate is found on the soil and in human or animal waste.

“In some locations in the U.S., there are storm water treatment facilities, and they are basically large basins that hold millions of storm water,” Houk said. “There’s a small ponding basin in Rota, but in Saipan, there is no facility [that has been] built.”

Such a facility stores storm water when there is a downpour. This would allow sediments to settle at the bottom, so that these sediments may be treated and cleaned. The process would limit the nutrients discharged to the sea at a low level.

“If people want to clean their marine environment, they have to have this,” he said. He added that there are other types of storm water treatment methods.

But he also said that, although the abundance of decaying algae are present on beach waters, these have no relation to bacteria that pose risk to human health.