Lake Garda Algae Blooms and Eel Deaths Raise Environmental Concerns
In the low lake, they still remember bundles of dead eels that ended up hundreds of them on the shores, suffocated by a slimy, green algae. Will this happen again? Then, due to a malfunction of the circumlacual sewage collector, tons of black water flowed into Garda Bay, immediately below Punta San Vigilio. This was followed by a frightening increase in spirogira, a very fine, green filament similar to the one that forms in fountains and stagnant ponds.
In the “aeroplani,” special mobile nets used for fishing from Brenzone southward, there were even thirty or forty-five quintals caught, making it problematic to recover the nets themselves. That algae suffocated the eels, which were then pushed dead onto the shore by the breaking waves.
This time, the phenomenon is fortunately different, also because there hasn’t been an increase in nutrients discharged into the lake, but only a seasonal disruption of the layers. The cavedani continue to glide, unharmed, beneath the floating streaks of anabaena.