The Foul Chartreuse Sea – Yale Climate Connections

Blooming Cyanobacteria! (by Charos Pix CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 via Flickr).

Researchers in Kotzebue, Alaska, are investigating why their town is increasingly playing host to harmful cyanobacteria.

Dead fish were everywhere, speckling the beach near town and extending onto the surrounding coastline. The sheer magnitude of the October 2021 die-off, when hundreds, possibly thousands, of herring washed up, is what sticks in the minds of the residents of Kotzebue, Alaska. Fish were “literally all over the beaches,” says Bob Schaeffer, a fisherman and elder from the Qikiqtaġruŋmiut tribe…