After kayaking on Sunday I had a little sea water inside of my kayak. Being 12-1/2 feet long and a bit slippery, I was unable to drain it myself. I figured I’d just take off the centre hatch and let it evaporate. But I forgot.
Yesterday at lunch I removed the hatch (I still have the kayak on top of the Jeep because they’re still working on my apartment and I’ve nowhere else to keep it) and removed the bag. Later, when the shade from the trees was moving, I moved the Jeep to the shade of the office building. I looked down from the 10th floor and saw a red spot on my white boat. When I went downstairs later I saw that the sea water had turned red.
I’m guessing that the warm environment inside the kayak (it’s been very, very hot here the last couple of days), being unable to evaporate since the hatch was on, provided a good medium for an algae bloom – a “red tide”, if you will.
Is that what happened?
(When I got home I recruited a neighbour kid to hold the kayak upside down and with the nose down – the drain plug is on top of the front of the bow – while I hosed out the inside.)
No, the kayak is white. The liquid, which was more or less clear when it went in, looked like 80 octane avgas – maybe redder.
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I did say “algae bloom”, with “red tide” in quotes followed by “if you will”.
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Come to think of it, the bag under the hatch is red nylon. (No, it was nowhere near the kayak when I looked in, having been removed to – I thought – let the water evaporate.) But I was looking the bag over this morning to see how easy it would be to waterproof it, and it did not have any discolouration that would lead me to believe it “leached” into the water. I’d think that since the bag would have mottling on it if some dye came off. Maybe I should wash it with my gym socks as an experiment?
I visited a lab where they grew the dinoflagellates that produce saxitoxin back in the 70’s. I can assure you that, in pure culture, they are red. There are a variety of different algae that produce toxins, and some of them are brown, but pure “red tide” is red. Here’s a shot from space.
Red dye from the hatch bag is a possibility, but nylon dyes are usually pretty stable. Is the bag new, or have you been soaking it in seawater for years ?
I’d still like to hear the epoxy laminate theory. Isn’t UV depolymerized resin yellow, rather than red ?
I guess it depends on what kind of algae they are Sprink. That picture you showed is South Africa (is the OP in SA?) plus, it looks more violet & I dont think the OP was up in space when he checked his kayak on the earth
Handy - The second link was almost certainly brown tide in the laguna madre, guessing from the appearance and from the url - Terry Whitledge has done a lot of research on brown tide, which is a chrysophyte and unrelated to the dinoflagellate which causes red tide. Red tide is usually red or orange. It can look like blood poured in the water. Brown tide was a big problem some time ago in the Laguna and it lasted about 6 years. Red tides never last that long, at least in huge blooms. There have been some less dense blooms in some areas of the red tide dinoflagellate. However, I doubt that the bloom in the kayak was the red tide organism, although I guess it is in the realm of remote possibility.
Well if the hatch was on the kayak for two or three days how could the algae have multiplied to such a huge concentration (clear water to red water) in the absence of sunlight? - or was the hatch open to the sunlight? I beleive that even when you have ideal nutrients and temperatures it takes more than 48 hours to acheive a full bloom such as this.
Another thing you could do is look at the water under a micropscope; you should easily be able to discern individual algae cells, whereas if the color comes from a dye you couldn’t see the source.
So I guess we’ll never know for sure what caused the red water. Could even have been one of your buds (or even a total stranger)that poured his big red soda pop in there for yucks. One thing though- if it had been the red tide organism, you would probably have smelled it. That stuff literally makes your eyes burn if you are around the beach when it is blooming. Don’t know what a little bit in a kayak would do, but the stuff is pretty wretched. I think Mikey’s right though - generally you would need more than a couple hours to go from clear to bright red. I know some guys who were culturing the red tide (or unsuccessfully trying, most of the time) at UT’s Marine Science Institute, but I don’t think they ever achieved the densities that are achieved in the wild. Some of this is because the organism is mobile. It doesn’t have to reproduce to those densities; it can bunch up after the numbers are already there. Note that in pictures of red tides there are big red swatches on the water, especially at times of the day when it comes to the surface. But usually the whole sea doesn’t turn red.
Yeah, like mmmiiikkkeee said. Algae is a plant, needs sunlight or it will die. ( like black plastic on grass). It also needs a store of nutrients as per http://www.keepertraining.com/ch6.html
Note
I repair kayaks and kayak myself in prime red tide country. All kayaks get wet inside and generally are put way with some water inside. I’ve never came across this situation before.
If the nylon bag theory doesn’t cut it either, I was looking for a long shot. I’m aware that the hardener portion of some laminating epoxy resin systems will turn red when exposed to moisture. Epoxies are quite sensitive to exact proportions in the mix. If there was too much hardener mixed with the resin during manufacture then free hardener will be contained within the cured resin matrix and available to take on moisture. Believe me. when apportioning a 5 to 1 mix, that is very easy to do. The hardener is slightly soluble in water as well. But alas this is not the case here.
My limited experience with laundry, almost certainly suggests to me its the nylon bag. You most certainly don’t mix the whites with the coloreds expecially if the coloured are new. And it takes very very very little dye to show up significantly in the water.
You could test this if you wanted to though. Just place the bag in the laundry tub, run some hot water and add some salt.
