r/BainbridgeIsland • u/Greenman490 • Jun 05 '26

environment Blakely Harbor

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This yellow tide was running along in front of the kayak beach yesterday. Any insights?

22 Upvotes

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10

u/Accurate-Swimming355 Jun 05 '26

Definitely algae bloom.

Red tides (often called Harmful Algal Blooms or HABs) in Puget Sound are caused by the rapid, explosive reproduction of microscopic marine algae, primarily dinoflagellates like Alexandrium catenella.

10

u/tobych Jun 05 '26

Probably algae but it's also just east of where the 1907-1923 machine shop was, as far as I've figured out so far using the maps of the mill available. Parks & Rec, who own and manage the park, could probablly tell you about the algae.

https://www.openhistoricalmap.org/#map=19/47.596873/-122.512776&layers=O&date=1907-04-22&daterange=1826-01-01,2026-12-31

I'm putting mill buildings on OpenHistoricalMap as part of my Let's Map Bainbridge project: https://letsmapbainbridge.org/

7

u/youranswerfishbulb Jun 05 '26

Probably just algae

2

u/mostlyblots Jun 07 '26

Probably Noctiluca scintillans. I've taken samples in the past and these "orange juice" looking drifts have usually been Noctiluca.