Neopestalotiopsis disease, which first appeared several years ago in Florida, can cause light to dark brown spots on plant leaves and rotting of the fruit. To avoid it, some local growers started getting their plants from a supplier in Canada. But now, major nurseries there are also seeing symptoms, and they’ve recently warned the fruit growers.

“They are basically canceling orders (and in many cases refunding the deposit) or telling plug plant producers and farmers to take plants at their own risk — no reimbursements for bad or infected plants delivered this year,” said Phil Brannen, a professor in the Plant Pathology Department at the University of Georgia, in an Aug. 21 post on the university’s cooperative extension’s website.

It’s not the first time Hampton Roads has dealt with a strawberry disease, but this one could have a major impact on growers who count on the popularity of the fruit.

“That’s a major crop that draws the consumers to the farms,” said Jayesh Samtani, associate professor and small fruit extension specialist at the Hampton Roads Agricultural Research and Extension Center. “It’s the first crop that gives you fruit in the spring season.”

The disease can reduce a grower’s harvest by as much as 50%, Samtani said.

“It’s scary for sure,” said Roy Flanagan, Virginia Beach’s agricultural extension agent and owner of Flanagan Farms, which offers u-pick strawberries in the spring. “It’s a new enemy of the plant that you’ve got to figure out to combat.”

Virginia Beach is the commonwealth’s largest producer of strawberries thanks to the area’s temperate climate and nutrient-rich soil. The value of the crop in Virginia Beach ranges from $750,000 to $1 million per year. Meanwhile, a strawberry farm in Virginia Beach sees an estimated 1,500 visitors each week in May, according to the city.

Some area farms were able to order healthy cutoffs, or bare root plants, from California this year before they sold out, according to Samtani. Flanagan Farms and Cullipher Farm are among those. Others will take the risk with the Canadian plants or cancel their orders.

The situation likely will have long-lasting repercussions.

“The disease has a tendency to stay in the soil from one season to another,” Samtani said. “Even next year, if your plants come in clean, it would not be advisable to use the same site.”

Cindy Weatherly, who operates a farm in Pungo and Cindy’s Produce, a farm stand on Harpers Road, will skip growing strawberries this year to avoid contamination.

“This is an aggressive strain,” Weatherly said. “I don’t want to introduce a disease into my soil that I know nothing about until I watch someone else take care of it.”

To help stave off the disease, which thrives in warm climates, some growers will receive their plants a little later than normal, Samtani said. Strawberries in southeast Virginia are typically planted from last week of September through the first week of October. Chandler, Sweet Charlie, and Ruby June varieties are mostly grown locally.

Samtani plants berries at the research center each year. He’s expecting strawberry plants to arrive Oct. 10.

The Henley family is one of the city’s largest strawberry producers, growing them across 10 acres. They received the tips of strawberry plants from a supplier in Nova Scotia and have been rooting them in trays, said farm owner Barbara Henley. She’s already noticed some signs of the disease in one of the varieties, but is on track to plant in three weeks.

“Ours look fairly good,” Henley said, also a City Council member. “I’m afraid to say too much.”

The research center is advising growers about how to mitigate the disease if plants are infected. One option is fumigating the soil, which involves injecting a synthetic chemical gas. Sanitizing clothing, equipment, machinery and pruning tools also will be critical.

And fungicidal treatments can also help keep the disease under control. However, the most effective chemical — thiram — is being phased out by the Environmental Protection Agency, Samtani said.

Some factors, like weather, will be out of the control of growers. A dry, mild spring could keep the disease at bay.

“We don’t really know what’s going to happen until it all unfolds and the season progresses,” Samtani said.

Stacy Parker, 757-222-5125, stacy.parker@pilotonline.com

What’s the first industry to fall victim to climate change? There’s a decent argument that it already happened — more than 600 years ago.

When the Norman Conquest in 1066 installed a French feudal aristocracy in the British Isles, the invaders brought with them a love of winemaking. Those skills flourished in the conditions of the Medieval Warm Period, a patch of unusually high temperatures from about 950 to 1250 that allowed vineyards to spread across the well-drained chalk soils of southern England. The mild conditions gave way to a frigid period known as the Little Ice Age, however, which held sway until the 19th century. As the climate cooled, English viticulture collapsed.

That should be a worrying example if you’re a winemaker. Grape vines are notoriously sensitive to the smallest changes in landscape and climate. Those with a skilled palate (I’m not one of them) can supposedly sense the subtlest of environmental effects in a bottle of wine — whether the winter that preceded the vintage was warm or cold, the harvest wet or dry, the grapes grown on a slope facing to the north or the south.

It doesn’t take much imagination to see how a warming climate could play havoc with this. Own a semiconductor factory, and your climate exposures will occur on the macro scale. Will bigger rainstorms flood the site, and will hotter summers push up my bill for air conditioning? A vintner, on the other hand, has to think about micro issues. Will a few extra warm nights or blazing days in growing season throw off the delicate balance of sugar and water formation in developing bunches? And will that make the resulting bottles less fragrant or complex than they otherwise would be?

For winemakers in Europe, a fresh climate headache is looming in the geographic indications they’ve used to defend their art. For the best part of a century, European agricultural producers have built a complex system of intellectual property around the idea that particular types of food and drink are regionally distinctive, and have names that must be protected under copyright law. There’s even a line on geographical indications in the Treaty of Versailles, the document that formally ended World War I.

Recognition of geographic indications is a basic hurdle for any nation wanting to strike a trade deal with the European Union and gain access to the world’s second-biggest market. It’s why makers of sparkling wine in most of the world can’t call their product Champagne, and why Australian and Canadian producers of fortified white wine these days label their bottles as “Apera,” because only those from the Jerez region of Spain can call themselves Sherry. Fully 1,646 of the 1,658 geographic indications for wine listed on the European Union’s eAmbrosia register are for EU countries. Of the rest, five are in the UK, four in China, two are in the U.S. (the Napa Valley and Willamette Valley) and one in Brazil.

Adding such geographic limits might have seemed like a good idea during the stable climate of the 20th century, but in the more disordered era into which we’re now moving it’s a risk. Many geographic indications assign a specific grape variety for a specific region. Barolo, arguably Italy’s most revered wine style, must be grown only with Nebbiolo grapes in a handful of communities among the misty mountains of Piedmont. As a warming planet makes the climate of northern Italy more like regions further south where Nebbiolo can’t flourish, the rigidity of Barolo’s geographic indication risks driving it into extinction.

Researchers in Europe recently analyzed 1,085 wine geographic indications across the continent to work out which were most at risk from a warming climate. What they found should worry viticulturalists: a swath of country is highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, and has little natural capacity to adapt.“Strong yield decreases were projected for northern Italy, central Spain, Greece, and Bulgaria,” they wrote, “and decreased suitability for Spain, parts of France, central and northern Italy, and large parts of eastern Europe.” In Burgundy, regions known for the Pinot Noir grape may become unable to grow the variety. The geographic indication system needs to be rethought to allow winegrowers to switch their practices as the climate warms, they argued.

That shouldn’t be impossible. Champagne, grown at the northern limit of wine cultivation and traditionally seen as the product of a difficult environment, is conventionally made from just three grape varieties: Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and Meunier. But there are four other less celebrated varieties (1) that can be added to the blend, and may provide a way of preserving the wine’s characteristics even as the climate of Champagne starts to more closely resemble that of southern France. A further variety, known as Voltis, has been selectively bred as part of a deliberate effort to prepare for the effects of a warmer climate.

For many wine regions, that’s going to be a wrenching shift. What makes European wine unique is the marriage of a particular grape and viticultural practice with a particular region’s soil, climate, and intangibles. That sort of thinking is going to have to change as the planet warms. If Europe’s winemakers don’t want to experience the fate of medieval English vineyards, they’ll need to adapt before they’re wiped out.

(1) The varieties are Arbane, Petit Meslier, Pinot Gris, and Pinot Blanc. They’re often regarded as more difficult to work with in Champagne.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

David Fickling is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering climate change and energy. Previously, he worked for Bloomberg News, the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times.

©2024 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com/opinion. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

At dawn, he would accompany his grandmother to a reef at low tide, where she plucked black snails, spiny lobsters and spiky sea urchins from the craggy rock. In Hawaiian, she would instruct him to break off a branch of kiawe, a type of mesquite, to tease out an octopus hiding in a hole.

It taught Rodrigues, 71, the value of ahupuaa, a Native Hawaiian system for dividing land from the mountains down to the ocean, with the residents of each section living off the land and waters within it.

But now the section where he lives and where his ancestors have always lived — the Olowalu ahupuaa — is also home to a temporary landfill being used to store debris from the deadly wildfire that decimated the historic nearby town of Lahaina last summer, destroying thousands of buildings and killing 102 people. It’s enough refuse to cover five football fields five stories high, including soil contaminated with lead and arsenic.

A controversy over whether that site is truly temporary — and over where the debris might finally wind up — has sparked a fierce legal fight with tens of millions of dollars at stake, not to mention a priceless ecosystem rich with coral, manta rays and other sea life just offshore.

“Why would you go put opala like this in a place that’s clean?” Rodrigues asked, using a Hawaiian word for trash.

Handling debris after large wildfires is always a logistical challenge. After the 2018 Camp Fire killed 85 people and burned down most of the town of Paradise, California, more than 300,000 truck loads were required to transport the debris to three different landfills, said Cole Glenwright, the deputy incident commander of the debris removal operation. The whole process took about a year.

It’s taking much longer on Maui, given environmental concerns, how long it has taken to clear destroyed lots, worries about Native Hawaiian cultural sites, and tussling over the ownership of a potential permanent site for the debris.

The temporary landfill in Olowalu is a former quarry on state-owned land and close to Lahaina, which made it a convenient choice for quickly storing the debris being cleared away so the town can rebuild. Officials believe its arid climate will reduce the risk of contamination spreading, and they say they’ve taken many precautions, including using thick liner and stormwater controls to contain runoff.

Officials have analyzed samples of soil, groundwater and surface water and found no traces of contamination being released, according to a quarterly report released in July.

But the site is just uphill from a coral reef, and some locals fear an ecological catastrophe if pollution does reach the water.

The operation of the site also threatens sacred Hawaiian shrines and altars and desecrates ancient Hawaiian burial sites, according to a lawsuit filed by two people who don’t want the debris in Olowalu. One of the plaintiffs is Manoa Ka’io Martin, whose ancestors are among those buried nearby. The other is farmer Eddy Garcia, who worries about contamination of the food he grows, including taro, bananas, pineapples and starfruit.

Amid demands to remove the debris from Olowalu, Maui County is seeking to seize a privately owned former quarry near the Central Maui Landfill across the island to use as a permanent dump site.

That’s prompted another legal fight. The company that owns the land, Komar Maui Properties, doesn’t want to give it up.

Komar bought the land in 2015 with plans to build a private landfill, but it says permitting issues have stalled development. It is contesting the county’s effort to take the property by eminent domain — a process by which governments can seize private land for public use, with fair compensation for the owner. A federal judge has prevented the county from taking immediate possession while the lawsuit plays out.

Andy Naden, general counsel and executive vice president of Komar Investments, the parent company of Komar Maui Properties, says the county moved to seize its land only after learning the Federal Emergency Management Agency would pay “tipping fees” associated with disposing of the Lahaina debris — fees typically paid by weight to landfill owners. Maui County charges a tipping fee of nearly $110 per ton for municipal solid waste.

“FEMA is going to dump 400,000 tons into this hole,” Naden said. “That equates to $44 million that the federal government is going to give to whoever has the hole.”

Shayne Agawa, director of Maui’s Department of Environmental Management, disputed that. He said his department has long been interested in acquiring the land as part of plans to expand the adjacent public landfill.

Agawa, who lives in Olowalu, said the county doesn’t want the debris to remain at the temporary site. But it has yet to come up with a backup plan in case the court blocks the county from seizing Komar’s land. Officials are looking at other nearby parcels, he said.

To respond to cultural concerns, Maui officials consulted with the county’s archaeologist, Janet Six, and FEMA had one of its historic advisors assess the site. Six told The Associated Press she could not rule out the presence of ancient cultural sites or burial grounds, but noted that the area was previously disturbed by mining. FEMA found that no historic properties would be affected.

The lawsuit filed by Garcia and Martin asserted that the construction and operation of the temporary dump has in fact damaged or desecrated such sites by exposing them to toxic material, in violation of Martin’s spiritual practices.

Garcia said he feels uneasy as rumbling trucks haul debris up the road next to his farm. He worries one heavy bout of rain will cause toxins from the debris to contaminate the food he grows.

The pair dropped their lawsuit after the county announced plans for the permanent site in central Maui, but their lawyer is considering their next legal steps while the debris sits in Olowalu.

“I have a feeling they’re going to try to make it permanent and just say, ‘Sorry, we can’t move it to the other site,’” Garcia said.

Further complicating the issue is that the ashes or bones of some fire victims might be mingled in the debris. Raenelle Stewart’s 97-year-old grandmother died in the fire. Stewart often wonders if the ashes the family received contained all her remains. The fire debris should be kept nearby, she said.

“I think they should designate a spot in Lahaina for it,” she said. “I don’t think it’s so toxic that the earth can’t handle.”

Randy Awo, a retired administrator in the state Department of Land and Natural Resources, is a Native Hawaiian resident of Maui. He’d prefer to have the debris shipped out of state — an option officials rejected as too expensive.

Awo called the concerns about remains “a sacred topic” and said he does not want to be insensitive to families who lost loved ones. But, he added, the community must also protect Maui’s finite amount of land.

“When our environment is subjected to toxins that threaten life itself,” Awo said, “we have to start making decisions that weigh both.”

At first, Nawal Baker thought she’d been bitten by a shark.

The 30-year-old Henrico resident and a friend were swimming in the ocean Sunday by Jennette’s Pier in Nags Head when she felt a severe pain on her foot. Knee deep in the Atlantic, she feared she was about to be pulled under, and yelled for her friend to get out of the water while heading for shore herself.

“I was looking down initially, because the water is so clear, and just as I looked up, I felt something. I was 100% sure it was a shark,” she said.

When she got out of the water, there was a “good amount of blood,” and it looked like someone had stabbed the top of her foot with a pencil. It didn’t take long to figure out the culprit was a stingray, not a shark.

“It looked like nothing, but the pain was indescribable,” she said.

Baker credits Debbie Wilson, a paramedic from Virginia, for keeping her calm as she was treated on the beach before being taken to the hospital.

“Debbie held my hand from start to finish, my eyes were on her the whole time,” Baker said.

Ray stings are relatively uncommon on the Outer Banks, local experts say, but do happen — we just don’t always hear about them.

“When our staff gets stung while teaching surf lessons, we simply have them soak their foot in a bucket of hot water, which helps immensely,” said Daryl Law, spokesman for Jennette’s Pier.

There are several types of stingrays in the waters around the Outer Banks and coastal North Carolina, with the Atlantic stingray the most common, according to the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality. A video from Jennette’s Pier on Sept. 1 showed several butterfly rays in the water around the time Baker was stung.

Rays are bottom-feeders with flattened, oval bodies and a long, venomous spine for self-defense. They can reach up to 6 feet long, but most are roughly 2 feet when encountered, the DEQ website said.

Law said people often confuse stingrays and harmless skates, noting rays “have whip-like tails that possess a sharp barb shaped like a long fingernail. Skates have sticker-like bumps on their tails but no stinging barb.”

Treating Baker’s sting began on the beach with hot packs, then continued in the hospital with immersing her foot in nearly scalding water, which helps neutralize stingray venom. Baker said she went into the ocean “knowing full well” she was sharing the water with plenty of sea creatures, but she didn’t expect an encounter with a stingray.

“The most traumatizing thing was thinking there was a shark and trying to shove my friend out of the water,” Baker said. “I genuinely thought that was the last moment of my life.”

Now, Baker’s thinking about getting a stingray tattoo on her foot when the wound heals.

Wildlife experts say ocean swimmers and waders can avoid rays by doing the “stingray shuffle.”

“Just shuffle your feet across the bottom and stingrays will feel the vibration and swim away, decreasing chances of being stung,” Law said.

A 0.3-mile stretch of beach in Buxton already had been closed for more than a year, with the expansion adding about a quarter of a mile more, the park service said in a release.

The beach is now closed from the southern end of beachfront homes in the village of Buxton at the end of Old Lighthouse Road to south of the old lighthouse jetties. The closure includes the beachfront in front of the southern groin and the Old Lighthouse Beach parking lot.

“The closure may change over the coming days based on ongoing field observations,” the release said.

Park rangers noticed “strong petroleum smells” Thursday morning along Old Lighthouse Beach, near the former U.S. Navy and U.S. Coast Guard facilities just north of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse’s original site, the park service said.

They also found erosion from strong winds and wave action this week “uncovered significant quantities” of concrete, rebar, wires, PVC and metal pipes, metal fragments, and cables at the former military site.

“Soil and groundwater that is apparently contaminated with petroleum from historic military use of the site is now exposed to the beachfront during low tide, and wave action during high tide,” the release said.

All Buxton visitors should stay out of the area, the park service said.

Rangers reported observations of the petroleum exposure to the National Response Center, operated by the Coast Guard, Army Corps of Engineers and other state of North Carolina agencies that assist with pollution response, the park service said. The park service also requested assistance from the Regional Response Team, an interagency team that can help coordinate response and provide technical advice during oil spills or pollution events.

On Sept. 1, 2023, the park service closed two-tenths of a mile of beach near the exposed debris, then expanded the closure in March to roughly three-tenths of a mile.

In May, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers removed one pipe at the site thought to be leaking petroleum on the beach. Cleanup efforts have stalled as federal agencies and the military grappled with who is responsible.

The site is part of a 25-acre area the park service formerly leased to the military. A Navy base operated there from 1956 to 1984 on a submarine monitoring project kept classified until 1991. The facility was then used as a Coast Guard base until 2013 before returning to park service control.

Swimming and wading is now permissible at the following Virginia Beach areas:

• Sandbridge Beach from Perch Lane to Bass Street

• Croatan Beach Park to Aqua Lane

• the Oceanfront from 8th Street to 22nd Street

• Kendall Street to Rockbridge Road

• Mortons Road to the end of Ocean View Avenue

Swimming and wading is now permissible at the following Norfolk areas:

• 5th Bay

• North Community Beach

• Ocean View Park

• 10th View

• 13th View

Yesterday, officials announced that enterococci levels were too high. The Virginia Department of Health measures public waters regularly for enterococci bacteria during the warmer months. Enterococci bacteria are a group of organisms used to measure fecal contamination in recreational waters. While they do not cause illness, the health department reports their presence is “closely correlated to the presence of other disease-causing organisms.”

People swimming or playing in waters with higher bacteria levels have an increased risk of developing gastrointestinal illness.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, bacteria can be introduced to waters in a variety of ways, including wastewater treatment plants, leaking septic systems, stormwater runoff, sewage discharged or dumped from recreational boats, domestic animal and wildlife waste, improper land application of manure or sewage, and runoff from pastures.

Eliza Noe, eliza.noe@virginiamedia.com

Austria, Hungary, Greece and Italy have been especially vulnerable to Mother Nature of late.

A heatwave, wildfires and even a volcanic eruption are threatening to make things difficult for residents and to cause chaos for tourists.

These are unprecedented conditions that even forced the brief closure of the Parthenon earlier this year.

At times, the temperature across Europe has risen to 104 degrees. Austria and Hungary have been especially hard-hit, with residents and tourists alike being advised to stay indoors between noon and 4 p.m. Cities such as Vienna and Budapest have set up outdoor cooling stations.

The situation has been compounded by wildfires in some places in Greece and Italy. The heat and dry conditions have forced evacuations in southern Greece, including some tourist spots in the popular Greek islands. Some attractions and lodgings have already closed, making it advisable for travelers to check ahead. People have already been warned to use masks for the smoke and ash from the fires.

And there’s nothing anybody can do about Europe’s most active volcano.

Mount Etna in Italy erupted on August 14 and forced the closure of Catania International Airport in Sicily. It has since reopened, but tourists are urged to check with their airlines about any further disruptions. Tourists are also advised to invest in travel insurance.

_______

©2024 Northstar Travel Media, LLC. Visit at travelpulse.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Swimming and wading is now prohibited in the following Norfolk areas:

• 5th Bay
• North Community Beach
• Ocean View Park
• 10th View and 13th View.

In Virginia Beach, swimming and wading are prohibited in the following areas:

• Sandbridge Beach from Perch Lane to Bass Street
• Croatan Beach Park to Aqua Lane
• At the Oceanfront from 8th Street to 22nd Street
• From Kendall Street to Rockbridge Road
• From Mortons Road to the end of Ocean View Avenue.

Signs will be posted in the affected areas.

The Virginia Department of Health measures public waters regularly for enterococci bacteria during the warmer months. Enterococci bacteria are a group of organisms used to measure fecal contamination in recreational waters. While they do not cause illness, the health department reports that their presence is “closely correlated to the presence of other disease-causing organisms.”

People swimming or playing in waters with higher bacteria levels have an increased risk of developing gastrointestinal illness.

Eliza Noe, eliza.noe@virginiamedia.com

But O’Neil isn’t there to study the grasses, so much as a perplexing invader in their midst called microseira, which is growing more and more prevalent there.

Located offshore of Havre de Grace, the Flats lie at the mouth of the Susquehanna River, the bay’s largest tributary. Estimated at over 10,600 acres in 2023, the sprawling bed of submerged aquatic vegetation, or SAV, is a key habitat for underwater creatures — and a critical sink for harmful sediments and nutrients rushing down the Susquehanna.

That’s what makes it such a key area for research. O’Neil, an associate research professor at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, visited in August with a host of other researchers and summer interns, along with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. Each team collected data about the grasses, including species like wild celery and water stargrass. But O’Neil was focused on the algae-like mats of microseira, embedded in the sediment beneath the spiny green grasses.

Known by the name lyngbya until a recent change, microseira is a type of cyanobacteria, a photosynthesizing bacteria that grows in clumps on the bottom. And as the season progresses, it grows up onto the grasses, in search of sunlight, and sometimes floats in unsightly mats on the water’s surface.

“In Australia, they call it mermaid’s hair,” O’Neil said. “But we always joke that we don’t want to meet that mermaid.”

Closely related cyanobacteria appear in tropical environments like Hawaii and Australia. But Maryland researchers first noticed it in the Flats in 2004, after watermen complained that the mats were clinging to their fishing gear. In recent years, its footprint has appeared to increase, O’Neil said, and warming waters due to climate change could add more fuel.

But the impact of the microseira on the Flats remains unclear. For the time being, the cyanobacteria doesn’t appear to be slowing the growth of the Chesapeake’s largest grass bed.

The recovery of the Flats from near-decimation in the 1970s is an oft-cited success story for the bay, at a time when the restoration effort has fewer items in the win column than bay officials would have hoped when they signed the latest recovery agreement in 2014.

That agreement calls for a total of 185,000 acres of underwater grasses in the bay, but the latest estimate from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, which tracks the figure annually, indicated there were 82,937 acres in the 2023 season — a considerable improvement compared to 2019’s figures, after rainy conditions buried grasses bay-wide, but well short of the goal.

That 2014 bay agreement also came with a 2025 deadline for states surrounding the Chesapeake to reduce their loads of nutrients and sediment runoff into the bay. While some states met their obligations or will come close, others remain far off the mark, meaning the overall effort will fall short.

A committee convened by Chesapeake Bay Program leaders unveiled its recommendations earlier this year for the future of the bay agreement. The committee called on governors of the bay states to recommit to the agreement, as scientists and other stakeholders figure out a new timeline for some of its goals, and new targets for others.

The latest science, in the form of a comprehensive evaluation released in May 2023, emphasizes the importance of shallow-water habitats like the Flats. In the bay’s deep trench, reductions in nutrients and sediments haven’t spawned the expected increases in dissolved oxygen levels. Whereas these improvements are arriving faster in shallow areas, particularly when underwater vegetation returns, providing habitat for crabs and fish.

In the Flats these days, that mysterious microseira is hardly difficult to find. Floating amid the grasses, O’Neil ducks underwater with her hand outstretched, and swims for the bottom. Her flippers dangle in the air for a moment, before she reappears, holding a fistful of the muddy, filamentous substance yanked from the grass bed.

Researchers believe the microseira is largely fed by nutrients in the water and legacy phosphorus in the sediment of the Flats.

In other habitats, such as Florida and Australia, similar cyanobacteria has crowded out aquatic vegetation, leading to declines. But the same story doesn’t seem to be playing out in the Chesapeake, said Brooke Landry, who focuses on SAV as program chief for living resources assessment at Maryland’s Department of Natural Resources.

“By August, there’s just a lot of it. It covers hundreds of acres in the bed,” Landry said. “It’s like: How is this not having a negative impact? And we’ll go and we’ll look around, and the grass underneath looks bright green and happy.”

The health of the Flats could be the reason, O’Neil said. The grasses in the Flats can grow up to 6 feet long, often reaching the surface, so the microseira cannot completely cover the grasses and block the sunlight. In other environments, such as Florida’s, the grasses can’t grow as high, sometimes because of hungry marine species such as turtles and manatees, O’Neil said.

But microseira has plenty of weapons in its arsenal, including an ability to “fix” nitrogen — or take in nitrogen from the atmosphere and use it for growth, something that algae cannot do. Therefore, simply reducing the amount of nutrient runoff into the water wouldn’t stop the microseira.

“I don’t want people to think that keeping nutrients out is not a good idea, because it is,” O’Neil said. “But there are other mitigation strategies that have been used in other places to save the seagrass, including harvesting [the microseira].”

In tropical environments like the Hawaiian and Australian shorelines, some types of lyngbya have been a documented cause of “stinging seaweed disease,” in humans, causing skin, eye and respiratory irritation because of the toxins they produce.

But the microseira found in the Flats creates different toxins that do not pose the same threat to people, said Cathy Wazniak, DNR’s program manager of coastal integrated assessment.

“It’s not a human health threat, because you have to ingest these things, and I don’t think anybody’s making a salad out of that benthic mat,” Wazniak said. “But there are animal implications, maybe ecosystem implications.”

Scientists still are trying to determine the impacts of the toxins, Wazniak said. They’ve found one in tiny zooplankton living on the mats, but it remains unclear whether the toxin is passing up the food chain to other organisms, and what effects it may have, Wazniak said.

Globally, cyanobacteria appear to be growing more plentiful, and spreading to new regions, as climate change warms underwater ecosystems, O’Neil said.

“It’s not just occurring here. The species that we work with in the marine environment, that used to be confined to Florida, I’m now finding in Cape Cod,” O’Neil said.

The microseira research is just one chapter in the evolving history of the Susquehanna Flats.

A pivotal moment came in 1972, when Hurricane Agnes, a generational storm, sent powerful floodwaters rushing down the Susquehanna, wiping out the Flats.

Back then, the storm felt like the “nail in the coffin” for the Flats, said Cassie Gurbisz, associate professor of marine science at St. Mary’s College of Maryland.

“The SAV was gone from the Flats for like 30 years — and then all of the sudden, in the early 2000s, it came back,” Gurbisz said.

That resurgence was the focus of Gurbisz’s dissertation. She determined that several factors came together to make it happen. Nutrient reductions, including from the ban of phosphates in detergent, and a dry spell in the bay region, created a “window of opportunity” for the grasses to regain a foothold at the mouth of the Susquehanna. And once the grasses passed a certain tipping point, the bed’s growth was exponential.

“It’s kind of like this runaway train. We call it positive feedback,” Gurbisz said. “The plants clear up the water, and that means they’re getting more light, and then they can grow even more, and clear up the water even more, and get even more light.”

The result is a strengthened ecosystem that can better withstand threats, like 2011’s Hurricane Lee, 2018’s heavy rains and other influxes of nutrient pollution.

For observers, that means a lush underwater meadow, visible from a boat when the waters are shallow, but enchanting from behind a dive mask, surrounded by swaying sprigs of green.

“I harp to my friends and neighbors all the time about how amazing the Chesapeake Bay is, and SAV. But still, their perception of getting in the water in the bay is just like ‘ick,’” Landry said. “The fact [is] that there are these beautiful areas, where the water is crystal clear.”

The whale was stranded in Corolla’s Ocean Hill neighborhood Wednesday afternoon, with beachgoers calling for help and trying to keep the whale alive by dousing her with buckets of ocean water.

Marina Doshkov, database technician and marine mammal stranding coordinator at the North Carolina Aquarium on Roanoke Island, said the female whale, scientifically known as kogia breviceps, was euthanized and taken to the North Carolina State University Center For Marine Sciences and Technology for a necropsy.

Veterinary students and representatives from the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries, the Department of Environmental Quality and the North Carolina Aquariums were involved in the exam, which showed a severe crassicauda infection, a common finding in sperm pygmy whale deaths, Doshkov said.

Pygmy sperm whale euthanized after stranding on the Outer Banks

Crassicauda is found in many species of whale, purpoise and squid, among other animals, and attacks the central nervous system, spinal cord and brain.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports sperm pygmy whales have been stranding along the southeast coast this month, Doshkov said.

“Ten-year average shows that August is the most popular time to see kogia stranding, so it’s pretty typical for this time of year,” she said in an email.

Sperm pygmy sperm whales are a toothed, deep-diving species found in temperate and tropical seas worldwide, according to NOAA Fisheries. Little is known about the species, which is considered rare and under the protection of the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

The stranding is the seventh whale death on the Outer Banks and in Virginia Beach this year. Within one week in March, three whales stranded in Nags Head: a pregnant dwarf sperm whale, her nearly full-term fetus and a juvenile male believed to be her offspring that was too young to survive on his own.

Doshkov said Thursday she is still waiting for a histopathology report to shed light on their deaths.

Earlier in March, a 26-foot female minke whale was found dead north of Corolla on the four-wheel drive beach. The whale showed evidence of infectious disease, Doshkov said.

The Outer Banks strandings came days after the deaths of two humpback whales that washed up March 2 and 3 in Virginia Beach. Scars on both animals revealed they had been entangled during their lives.