The Department of Water are conducting an experiment in the Vasse River to try and prevent blue-green algal blooms from occurring.
Scientists will trial a clay to see if it binds some of the nutrients that are within the sediments which cause the algal blooms.
Department of Water senior environmental officer Linda Kalnejais said too many nutrients were carried through the rivers and ground water.
Ms Kalnejais said there had been a lot of work done in the catchments to minimise those nutrients coming in but there were still a lot of nutrients stored in the sediments.
The clay being used is experimental and Ms Kalnejais said they had deployed 15 mesocolumns to do multiple tests of the dosage.
“The clay actually grabs the phosphate which is an essential nutrient for the phytoplankton, if they do not have phosphate then they cannot grow so that should help minimise the blue-green algal growth,” she said.
The trial will be conducted throughout the summer when algal growths were most likely to occur.
“Hopefully we will see that there wasn’t an algal bloom within the mesocolumns sooner than that,” she said.
“We should have full results by the end of summer.”
If the trials prove to be successful, environmental chemist Svenja Tulipia said they would likely upscale the project next year to cover a bigger area.
Senior management officer Kirrilly Hastings said they had done a succesful experiment in the early 2000’s but the product was too expensive.
