NEW YORK, BRONX (ORDO News) — A strange change in water color occurred at Keelia Pond National Wildlife Refuge in Maui, Hawaii. Since October 30, the staff of the reserve have been trying to find out the reasons for this amazing phenomenon.
Local wildlife officials are urging visitors to avoid contact with the water until a definitive explanation for this mysterious phenomenon is found.
Manager Brett Wolfe recounted how a beachgoer noticed something strange.
“I just got a text from someone who was walking on the beach, and they called me and said, ‘There’s something weird going on here,’” she said of the situation.
Currently, scientists believe that the cause of the color change may be a single-celled organism known as halobacteria. However, further tests are required to confirm this theory.
“Halobacteria are salt-loving organisms that live in bodies of water with high salinity,” notes the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service website.
Salinity at the mouth of the pond currently exceeds 70 parts per thousand, twice the salinity of seawater.
The University of Hawaii (UH) is currently conducting additional tests to determine the exact strain of halobacteria. Local residents and tourists are anxiously awaiting the test results.
—
Online:
News agencies contributed to this report, edited and published by ORDO News editors.
Contact us: [email protected]
Our Standards, Terms of Use: Standard Terms And Conditions.
To eliminate any confusion arising from different time zones and daylight saving changes, all times displayed on our platforms are in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).