Klamath Lake stretches for nearly 30 miles north of Klamath Falls. Algae is the dominant life form -- to the detriment of other creatures. Jacob Kann, the aquatic ecologist, is concerned that the lake's stock of native fish is being depleted. Agricultural runoff is supercharging the lake with nutrients, spurring the algae on, and crowding out everything else. Kann is also worried that the supercharging process may make future toxic blooms more likely. Marta Kollman, like any good salesperson, thrives on maintaining a blissfully unworried pose. She blames last year's microcystis bloom on a spate of unseasonably hot weather. To her, the lake is a bottomless cornucopia. "The great thing about algae is that the more you take out, the more grows back," said Kollman. "We're not worried about running out." Running out would be a Super Blue Green disaster. Multilevel marketing requires constant growth. Cell Tech has extravagant goals for the near future -- Kollman's husband, Daryl, has challenged Cell Tech's distributors, currently numbered at around 275,000, to boost their numbers to 3 million by 1998 and 5 million by the millennium. Tighter state or FDA regulations could hamper that growth. So could increased competition, or an unfavorable ruling in the upcoming lawsuit. The ecology of Super Blue Green Algae includes many players -- toxicologists, personal injury lawyers, pushy distributors and even Usenet bulletin-board regulars. They flow in and around each other in a pattern every bit as iridescent and endlessly motile as that of the algae itself. Reflections of that pattern can be found on the Net, and, as I had discovered, the Net is creating new ways to link the players -- in the story of algae, or in any story. The information, which isn't necessarily the truth, is out there, albeit not always in plain sight. And always, of course, warped by hidden motives. Perhaps that's how it should be. Perhaps we should not look to the Net for answers, but only for starting points. It's unwise, in any case, to count on neatly wrapped packages of ultimate truth, available for easy download in the not too distant future. In my algae odyssey, I had grasped some measure of certifiable fact. I was convinced that there are potential health hazards associated with consuming Super Blue Green Algae. But it was also clear that algae eaters aren't hopeless dupes -- that they are getting something for their money. I, for one, am grateful that I followed the trail as far as I did. If I hadn't, I would never have learned one truth about pond scum: that you cannot find it on the open waters of Klamath Lake. The dancing green tendrils of Aphanizomenon flos-aquae are full of all the mystery and wonder of life; to call the algae "pond scum" is to fling a mortal insult. Better, perhaps, to see its restless complexity as a metaphor for truth. That might do the stuff justice.
Is the Net a good way to discover the truth -- about blue-green algae or anything else? Come to the Digital Culture area of Table Talk and post your ideas. |
