(Oceanography Society, 2005-06)
Babin, Marcel; Cullen, John C.; Roesler, Collin S.; Donaghay, Percy L.; Doucette, Gregory J.; Kahru, Mati; Lewis, Marlon R.; Scholin, Christopher A.; Sieracki, Michael E.; Sosik, Heidi M.
Harmful algal blooms (HABs) represent a diverse
range of phenomena that universally share only two
characteristics: they produce effects on ecosystems
or food resources that humans perceive as harmful,
and their progression is fundamentally a process
of population dynamics under oceanographic control.
Because of the complexity, scales, and transient
nature of HABs, their monitoring and prediction
requires rapid, intensive, extensive, and sustained
observations at sea. These requirements cannot
be met with traditional approaches that depend
on ships for sampling and laboratories for chemical
or biological analyses. Fortunately, new sensing
technologies that operate autonomously in situ will
allow, in the near future, the development of comprehensive
observation strategies for timely detection
of HABs. In turn, developments in modeling
will support prediction of these phenomena, based
directly on real-time measurements.
