Officials said on Friday that they had successfully cleaned up the algae problem in Qingdao, with 1.37% of the area covered in algae and a net in place to stop new outbreaks. But the beach at Baishatan, 150 kilometres north of the port city of Qingdao, is now lined with 10-metre-wide slicks of green sludge, the report said.
State media quoted a number of scientists saying the algae is a natural phenomenon that poses few health risks, unlike the toxic blue-green algae that appeared in eastern China’s Taihu Lake last year.
However, some environmental activists said the size of the algae outbreak was due to pollution from industry and fish farms. "The natural ecosystem of the ocean has been destroyed, which is why strange events such as this can happen," the report quoted Wen Bo, from Save China’s Seas Network, as saying.
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