The Santa Cruz de Tenerife City Council advises against bathing on the Valleseco beach. The municipal corporation has raised the red flag at the appearance of a huge brown stain in the sea.
According to the City Council, the presence of microalgae and also traces of hydrocarbons on the coast have been identified.
Microalgae are cyanobacteria Trichodesmium erythreaumknown on the islands in the summers of 2004, 2011 and, above all, 2017when massive blooms took place on the coasts of the Archipelago. That episode generated social alarm and the lack of information in this regard led Public Health to issue a series of recommendations and the Government of the Canary Islands to order a report to shed light on the marine organism.
“The cyanobacteria that have appeared in Las Canteras, in the south of Gran Canaria or on the coasts of Tenerife and La Gomera recur almost every year. There are slightly colder years in which there has been less, but this particular one, a very large temperature anomaly has been generated, probably influenced by the El Niño process of the Pacific Ocean, which is giving rise to episodes of intense heat that affect the sea. The fact that the temperature is so high and that the wind has dropped for a few days has caused cyanobacteria to proliferate”, Javier Arístegui, professor of Ecology at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, recently explained to this newsroom.
