Random Belize Photo of the Moment - Red river in Ambergris
Here’s a photo we took in 2007, which is in our Ambergris Caye photos section of our Belize pictures area. No need to adjust your monitor, that is a red river and we aren’t sure why. If this was in Belize City with its astonishingly high murder rate you might wonder if this is a river of blood, but on peaceful Ambergris Caye that doesn’t seem likely. This is about a mile north of the Split on the island, and if you know why this is red, please leave a comment because we’d like to know.
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Roger |
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1 comment | April 30th, 2008
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The red color is algae bloom due to nutrient run-off from surrounding farms using high Nitrogen and Phosphorus rich fertilizers (mostly to grow corn). These blooms thrive in this rich nutrient environment making the water hypoxic (no dissolved oxygen) killing the other aquatic life that depends on oxygen except of course anaerobic organisms (don’t need oxygen to survive). Or it could be one of the neighbor kids dumping a lot of red paint in the river :p
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The red color is algae bloom due to nutrient run-off from surrounding farms using high Nitrogen and Phosphorus rich fertilizers (mostly to grow corn). These blooms thrive in this rich nutrient environment making the water hypoxic (no dissolved oxygen) killing the other aquatic life that depends on oxygen except of course anaerobic organisms (don’t need oxygen to survive). Or it could be one of the neighbor kids dumping a lot of red paint in the river :p