Can water be made clear?

[Banned Member]

I know this is an odd question, but here it goes:

Suppose you take the water around Shanghai, China. And you somehow remove all the bacterial growth/algae growth, etc. Thus making the water some-what clean and swimmable.

Would this be possible? And would it be possible to make beaches in such places where pollution is rampant look (Outter appearance wise) like beaches in the Caribbean or South Pacific (Clear, light blue water)?

 

[Cheekymonkey]

I guess it would be in small amounts, but considering the amount of water in those seas, more water with algae growth/bacterial growth would move in and make it dirty again.

 

[cobaltblue]

As terrible as they are for a lot of things, the zebra mussels have done a great job with water clarity in the Great Lakes.

 

[Banned Member]

As terrible as they are for a lot of things, the zebra mussels have done a great job with water clarity in the Great Lakes.

Are they legal to own? I want to try an experiment with them.

Water with tons of sediment.

Insert zebra mussels.

Wait for reaction.

Cheekymonkey - Yeah you're probably right. Water flow would ruin it if done in mass quantity.

 

[Packhorse]

It would be better to stop the polution that caused the dirty water in the first place.

 

[Cheekymonkey]

Ah well arent you a wishful thinker Packhorse

yea it certainly is the ideal though, the oceans are more resilient then poeple think if pollution stopped now they would fix themselves more then people know.

 

[Packhorse]

Thats a mighty big IF

 

[David P]

possible yes! realistic no! Maybe start with some very large foam fractioners, major amounts of UV sterilization, obscene amounts of carbon... I've read posts of students working on schemes for doing this same type of work in the salton seas...

 

[fabasard]

I go along totally with David P (above). The problem is the human interferance. If you COULD remove mankind from this planet for say 1000 years, life would once again be teaming in both the jungles of downtown Manhatten (in a thousand years, nature is gonna take back what is hers) and the blue oceans of China. Left to its own devices, nature WILL clean itself up, but man is mucking it up faster than it can be repaired. What you need, and herein lies the problem, is a Fast growth mussel that thrives in a polluted environmennt, but you have to be able to stop the growth of said mussel when the job is done, else it takes over. Of course it would also help emmensely if man didn't dump his non-filtered waste directly into the ocean. Ocean liners, barges, factories, all of us.

 

[MarkH]

Also, many murky areas are supposed to be that way. In some of the colder seas, murky, greenish plankton blooms are a sign of health. That's why they say that the colder areas can support more marine life - all the extra nutrients (plus more oxygen).