Last week, Bay Farm Island residents noticed a white foamy substance stretching out across the top of the lagoon. While some guessed the substance to be soap or even frost, Public Works Director Erin Smith told the Alameda Post that reports the City received regarding the “bubbles” concluded them to be sea foam.
“The presence of sea foam in the lagoon may have resulted from the City’s routine movement of Bay water into the lagoon and/or from sea foam that was already present in the Bay and carried into the lagoon. The foam largely dissipated within a few hours of initial observation,” Smith told the Post in an email.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, sea foam forms when its contents—dissolved salts, proteins, fats, dead algae, detergents and other pollutants, along with many bits of organic and artificial matter—are vigorously shaken up, typically by wind and waves.
The sea foam that was present in the lagoon is thought to have been caused by the movement of the water from the Bay to the lagoon, not from an algal bloom. Algal blooms are another common source of thick sea foam and occur when large blooms of algae decay offshore. They can be harmful to human health and the environment, according to NOAA.
Kelsey Goeres is the Managing Editor of the Alameda Post. Contact her via [email protected]. Her writing is collected at AlamedaPost.com/Kelsey-Goeres.
