Categories: Report

What causes a red tide?

Ethekweni Municipality issues warning about themselves

What causes a red tide?

What causes a red tide?: When the images of the red tide started popping up on my screen, of a possible red tide off the KZN coast, I never believed it and called BS. I mean, we have the mighty Agulhas current right? Travelling at a heady 6 knots, north to south. Removing any and all trace of the ANC’s freshly delivered human sewage waste, daily.

Countercurrents and Upswellings

But, the east wind has been relentless recently. And you would imagine that this would help move the ANC’s poo south and into the southern ocean.

However, it doesn’t. As you can visibly notice, the wind and the currents are at play nonstop. Recently, Professor Turton, down in Southport on the lower south coast of KZN, observed the interactions between all these materials and forces. The wind pushes the outside clean water at the freshwater plume. The wind keeps blowing and mounting pressure against the lighter surface-bound barrier of brown water.

Eventually, so much clean water is forced against the shore, that it breaks through the brown water and swells up – right on the inside of the plume. This is an upswelling. And all this pressure has to go somewhere. This is what creates a counter current.

A river navigator will tell you about the handiness of these counter-currents when negotiating passage upstream. It’s the same hydraulic pattern that happens here in the ocean.

Atrophic Conditions

So now we have the ANC pumping huge dumps of sewage – human waste – directly into the Umgeni and other rivers in Durban. The waste gets trapped in the counter currents. Durban has particularly effective counter current conditions.

So it seems, that with the wind pumping every day, the sewage got trapped off Umhlanga and north. Right where this newly acclaimed red tide is positioned.

And this doesn’t take long to develop atrophic conditions. A severe lack of oxygen prevails once the algae that thrive in sewage has consumed all of it. – does the trick.

Today

Today the affected patch of water has moved southwards and over Number One reef off Durban City.

Dunno what this completely ineffective bunch are going to do about anything. Have you seen what they have done to Sodwana?

How long this goes on for I don’t guess. But with more and more east winds expected, it does not look like it will be soon.

How did this happen?

It results from the ANC’s complete mismanagement of the country’s infrastructure. The ANC has turned the entire country’s river system into one big toilet.

And a dump…check out THIS story about what they are doing to Port Shepstone.