Stone Lab shows off Lake Erie algae research

GIBRALTAR ISLAND - With a plain white Secchi disk mounted on a long pole, researchers at Ohio State University's Ohio Sea Grant and Stone Laboratory can get a good sense of Lake Erie's water clarity and how far light penetrates into the water column.

"Light's really important right now. Algae uses it to photosynthesize. So understanding how far down at depth they can survive is really important," said Kristen Fussell, assistant director of administration and research for the Ohio Sea Grant College Program, as she watched fellow scientists on another research vessel lower a disk into the water Thursday.

Stone Lab staff members on Gibraltar Island showed visitors a glimpse of their water quality sampling testing and research conducted both in-lab and on Lake Erie Thursday, hours after NOAA issued its annual harmful algal bloom forecast.

As the lake's waves kicked up slightly, forcing research boat passengers to steady themselves in the choppy waters, Stone Lab staffers lowered zooplankton and phytoplankton nets into Lake Erie and slowly brought them back up.

Fussell said water escapes through the nets' tiny holes as scientists raise them up.

The phytoplankton and zooplankton stay in a small cup and are collected for counting at a later date.

The Stone Lab Algal and Water Quality Lab, which opened in 2013, allows researchers to identify plankton, measure chlorophyll content and cyanobacteria toxins, analyze organic and inorganic suspended solids, and test for nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrogen.

With HABs becoming a bigger threat to the lake's health and coastal communities' drinking water, the lab has become an important tool for scientists in trying to understand how algae grows and spreads through the Western Lake Erie basin.

Justin Chaffin, Stone Lab's research coordinator, said scientists are trying to develop a toxicity forecast that would go hand-in-hand with NOAA's annual Lake Erie HAB prediction, where dissolved phosphorus loads are measured from the Maumee River watershed.

He conducted a couple of lab experiments researchers perform to measure Lake Erie's phosphorus levels and chlorophyll, including one experiment where Chaffin used a filter similar to a coffee filter to find dissolved phosphorus levels in a lake water sample.

Chaffin said nitrogen, which has been linked to algae toxicity, tends to be most abundant early in the summer and then it slowly decreases in Lake Erie.

By fall, nitrogen can barely be found in the lake, Chaffin said.

Cyanobacteria that make up HABs follow a similar pattern, producing a lot of toxins in early summer when there's more nitrogen in the water.

"So you'll have highly toxic blooms in the early summer, which then transitions into a more non-toxic bloom. And it's largely due to nitrogen," Chaffin said.

A future toxicity forecast may be able to show the public how toxic certain areas of Lake Erie might be within a week's time span, Chaffin said.

dacarson@gannett.com

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Twitter: @DanielCarson7