Inhibition of marine coastal bloomforming phytopl

Authors: Yufeng Yang Qing Liu Zhaoyang Chai Yingzhong Tang

Publish Date: 2014/12/12

Volume: 27, Issue: 6, Pages: 2341-2352

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Abstract

While harmful algal blooms HABs have become a threat to fisheries environmental and public health and economies worldwide most of the approaches under investigations for prevention control and mitigation PCM of HABs are limited by high cost and possible secondary pollution This study reports our laboratory and field experiments demonstrating effective growthinhibiting effects of the widely cultivated seaweed Gracilaria lemaneiformis on phytoplankton possibly forming HABs Laboratory experiments demonstrated significant growthinhibiting effects of fresh G lemaneiformis thalli in a doseresponse manner on four of six test microalgae commonly observed in the seaweed cultivation area Scrippsiella trochoidea Prorocentrum micans Skeletonema costatum Dunaliella salina and on the natural phytoplankton assemblage in seawater Significant inhibiting effects were also observed from in situ bottle 10 L and mesocosm 50 and 1000 L experiments on the harmful alga Phaeocystis globosa during its blooms Based on a largescale field survey the phytoplankton abundance in the areas with Gracilaria cultivation was demonstrated to be significantly lower than that in the areas without Gracilaria Collectively our results showed that largescale cultivation of G lemaneiformis is an effective approach to prevent HABs in coastal waters as an added value to the economically viable industry of Gracilaria cultivationThis work was supported by the project of the Department of Science and Technology of China 2012BAD18B01 Chinese Special Fund for Agroscientific Research in the Public Interest 201403008 the National Natural Science Foundation of China U1301235 41173079 and the Frontier Research Program in Marine Ecology of IOCAS Y32331101Q None of these sponsors had particular involvement or intention in the study design the collection analysis and interpretation of data the writing of the paper and the decision to submit the article for publication We are grateful to Prof Weizhou Chen from Shantou University China for sharing data about the annual production of the seaweed G lemaneiformis We are also very grateful to the anonymous reviewers’ constructive comments and suggestions

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