Dr. Emily Hall - Mote Marine Lab - Bluegreen Algae Grants

The state of Florida gives more than $3,000,000 in grant money to Sarasota's Mote Marine Lab, to research three projects that could lead to reduction of the problem of blue-green algae in Florida's freshwater lakes. We speak with Dr. Emily Hall, who's leading one of those projects at Mote. 

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Gordon Bird here beyond the News,some state money and some scientists based in
Sarasota, the well known organization forUS go to work on blue green algae.
That of course means the toxic bacteriathat literally lives on light and makes
fresh water dangerous for drinking or swimming, and it's a problem every year in
Florida. Mote Marine Lab is gettingmore than three million dollars from the state

(00:23):
Department of Environmental Protection to pay forthree projects targeting those blue green algael blooms.
They're not the same as the redtie. These are the ones that
we see a lot on lakes inthe spring and summer, especially inland.
We have doctor Emily Hall with MoteMarine Lab in Sarasota, and she is
taking a leadership role in one ofthose three projects, and we're going to

(00:43):
be talking about all three and joinsus now and beyond the News. Doctor
Hall, Good day to you,Hi, how are you doing? Thank
you? Now? You're going tostudy a way, the one you're most
directly involved with is of these threeprojects. You're going to study a way
to cut down on the nutrients thatthese blooms feed on and using something that

(01:04):
actually detects these nutrients presence in thewater. So tell us about your project.
So I'm gonna be working with agroup called Blue Green Water, and
this is a group that's been workingon harmful algal reduction for a while with
us, both marine harmful algay aswell as freshwater harmful alergy. And their

(01:25):
product is called lake guard Do andwe've hypothesized, based on preliminary data that
it cannot only remove some of thatcyanobacteria that we're talking about in those lakes,
but it can also reduce the nutrientsby binding them up into the product
itself, which would help make thisa longer term a test or a longer

(01:49):
term product that could last instead ofjust like you said, every year trying
to hit it. But this maylast a little bit longer than that.
And there are a couple of othergrants. One of them is to I
guess study if I'm understanding this andI'm oversimplifying it, correct me here to
study something that is actually supposed toremove the algae from waterways. And the
third is supposed to eliminate both thealgae and the toxins that they create.

(02:14):
If you could fill us in onthat, So I don't have a whole
lot of detail about those products,but I do know that my colleagues,
doctor Cindy Hill and doctor Rich Pearceare working on those We are also partnering
with one of those products to lookat nutrient removal as well, So because
that nutrient removal is very important alongwith getting rid of the harmful algy.

(02:36):
But those would be better spoken bymy colleagues, you know, in better
detail about those projects. Now Iget the sense with these three grants that
Mote and the State of Florida aretrying to break out of that cycle of
getting algae blooms every year and waitingfor those blooms to go away. That
you, as you said, reallywant to make a lasting change and kind

(02:58):
of break that cycle and make thingsdifferent in Florida. Is that what's the
long term goal? How do youdefine success with these programs? Well,
I would say long term success isthat, you know, we want to
do some of these short term fixes. We want to try to get rid
of a harmful algae that is toxicto humans, toxic to animals, toxic

(03:20):
to the environment right away, butwe would like to see those longer term
effects of you know, incoming nutrientsto those freshwater body systems not fit and
linger. And last, you know, we want them to either be cycled
up. You know, there's alot, many, many options for doing
that, but this is the productsthat we're working with are just are one

(03:42):
option for doing that, and we'rereally hoping that that it may make an
improvement and ultimately we need to considernot putting as much nutrients into these systems.
But that's that's, you know,a bigger picture, a bigger question,
a bigger ask. Now, howare these product products? Is?
The goal when you bring these onlineis to find something to develop, something

(04:05):
that can be scaled up, thatcan be used on a larger scale in
a lot of places because obviously manyplaces in Florida have blue green allergy problems
and we're not the only state orthe only part of the world, but
has this problem correct. We westart off by testing these things a very
small scale. We're looking at beakersized you know, coffee cup size tests,

(04:30):
you know, seeing how well theywork, and then we scale up.
We actually have facilities here at MOATto be able to scale up to
larger tanks, large you know,almost swimming pool size tanks, to see
if if it'll work, and thenultimately to do what we're doing with this
project is to test it in alake, a system that's already listed that
already has uh, you know,listed for for harmful impacts, either from

(04:54):
blooms or from other from other issues. And once we test that and show
what kind of results, you know, hopefully we have positive results, and
then the idea would be to presentthat back to the state and say yes,
or if it doesn't work, youknow, we'll go back and say
no, you know, maybe thisisn't right and we need to tweak it.
Very good. Well, we'll continueto follow and wish you the best
of success in developing some technologies thatcan deal with blue green algae. Doctor

(05:18):
Emily Hall with Mote Marine Lab inSarasota, thank you very much for joining
us on Beyond the News