Friends of Gualala River Protecting the Gualala River watershed and the species living within it
Drought Changes in the
Gualala River Estuary’s Summer Lagoon:
Native Aquatic Vegetation versus Algal Blooms
A virtual field trip with questions and answers – (more than you wanted to know)
Friends of Gualala River, August 2021
Peter Baye, Ph.D, Coastal Ecologist, Botanist
Question: What is all the green stuff in the Gualala River lagoon? Is it one of the “Harmful Algal Blooms” in the news? Is it an invasive nonnative species?
Answer: No. Most of these green masses are colonies of a native submerged aquatic plant, wigeongrass (Ruppia cirrhosa). Wigeongrass is not an invasive nonnative species or algae, nor is it a true grass. It is a native “seagrass” found in estuaries around the world.
Read the entire presentation (3.4 MB .pdf):
