[Rhodes22-list] Expanding Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico - some ideas

[Robert Skinner]

DCLewis1 at aol.com wrote:
> ...
> Re the red tide: Seems strange to me that the population of alge that  causes
> the red tide could simply take off without a lot of some sort of  nutrient.
> Clearly, it takes more of something for the little buggers  to “bloom”,
> whatever the “it” is, let’s call it a nutrient.  But it may  well not be “man made
> ”...

Two theories may be useful if you really want to dig into this.

The first is "swarm theory".  It describes group activity such 
as bird flocking during migration, or schools of fish wheeling 
and turning together.

The second relates to chemical communication between basic 
life forms.  It may be that when populations reach a certain 
point, the concentrations of an "I am here" messenger molecule 
hit a critical value, and there is a non-linear change in 
behavior.

/Robert