Replies to post #121730 on Bagman's charts, watchlists, scans and etc.

[oldberkeley]

Not exactly though they're related.

They're both the same general type of organism— microscopic phytoplankton, commonly called algae. They’re some of the oldest kinds of living things on earth, literally billions of years old, and there are thousands of different types. (Think of two insects: a ladybug and an African killer bee.:-))

In your fish tank, when the water gets too still or bunches of food or fish poop stagnate on the surface, these little buggers have a feast, proliferate, start to become visible—a bloom—because there are so many millions of them in one place. But that type of algal bloom is essentially harmless unless it gets so big that it consumes all the oxygen in the water.

Harmful algal blooms (called HABS) like the massive ones currently in Lake Erie, consist of far nastier forms of toxic algae that produce poisons.