Minnows Blamed For Algae-filled French, Spanish Lakes

Seix, France, Sept 6 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 6th Sep, 2023 ) :Perched 1,800 metres (about 6,000 feet) from France's border with Spain is the emerald Areau lake -- whose colour experts blame on minnows used by anglers as live bait.

"When one sees these fish in the mountain lakes, we see a disturbed ecosystem," said Adeline Loyau, a biologist and researcher at the National Polytechnic Institute (INP) in the southern French city of Toulouse.

The tiny fish, less than 10 centimetres long, are used as live bait.

But some managed to escape the hooks and have thrived, devouring amphibians, insects and zooplankton -- "microscopic crustaceans whose role is to devour algae and keep the water crystal clear and very pure", Loyau told AFP.

When the lake became green "it meant the algae won", said Dirk Schmeller, a professor specialising in mountain ecology at the INP.

But the abundance of algae in the once-clear waters is not only due to this, and several other issues are being examined.