'Green nightmare' ahead for Olympic sailors

updated 5:51 p.m. ET July 2, 2008

QINGDAO, China - China's latest Olympics nightmare is a vast algae bloom that covers one-third of the sea where the world's best sailors are supposed to be competing in just over a month. Athletes call it the blob, the carpet, the fairway.

"We almost think of it as land," said Carrie Howe, a member of the U.S. team and her three-person squad's unofficial algae remover. During practice, she dips her hand into the goo three or four times an hour to remove it from the rudder.

When it collects shaggily on the boat's tow rope, she and her teammates refer to it as "the dog." They've named it Hickory.

Chinese officials are trying to make the stuff go away. Hundreds of soldiers cleaned it up by hand in a seaside park Wednesday. About 10,000 ordinary citizens were doing the same along the shore, while more than 1,200 fishing and other boats hauled it in by net, the workers smiling and flashing the two-fingered victory sign to journalists.

"We all need to pitch in," said Gao Shaofan, a massage parlor employee who was stuffing the algae into plastic sacks with her co-workers. "This is the worst it's ever been that we know."

Chinese officials promised at a news conference Wednesday that the Olympics competition area, all 19 square miles of it, will be clear of the algae before races begin Aug. 9.

"Actually, we don't have a backup," Qu Chun, the sailing competition manager, said to a small chorus of groans from coaches.

First, the soupy fog
The sailing teams had already known Qingdao, a charming port on China's east coast known for its Tsingtao beer, would be a difficult venue. The lower-than-ideal winds. The stronger-than-ideal current. The soupy fog that sometimes keeps teams off the water.

Then came the algae, which one Chinese official at the news conference, Lu Zhenyu, called a "natural disaster." First detected in May, it recently swelled to stretches of up to a few miles long.

Ng Han Guan / AP A Chinese swimmer removes blue green algae from coastal waters in Qingdao, eastern China, on Wednesday.

Chinese officials and some experts blamed it on a combination of factors including warmer seas, winds from the south and an "exotic" strain of algae from farther down the coast.

You could eat it if you want, they added, saying Japanese and Koreans do.

"In itself, it's not harmful," said Fei Xiugang, who described himself at the news conference as a seaweed expert. "It absorbs carbon dioxide. It actually cleans the water."

But Wang Liqing, a marine biology professor at Shanghai Ocean University, said in a phone interview that the bloom could be caused by pollution, which deposits excessive nutrients in the water and causes algae to grow at abnormal rates. China's east coast is highly industrial.

'Green nightmare'
Whatever the cause of the algae, the sailors — who didn't become Olympians through negative thinking — have tried to describe it in not-so-terrible terms.

"A very new, very large variable," Howe said.

"Oh my goodness," said Karyn Gojnich of the Australian team.

"A green nightmare," said Andreas Kosuratopoulos of the Greek team, dropping the Olympian guard.

"We've watched the Dutch Yngling team, coach boat and three boats in tow get stuck so badly they had to be hooked and hauled out by a local fishing trawler," U.S. sailor Andrew Campbell wrote in his blog last week.

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