Perched 1,800 meters (about 6,000 feet) near France’s border with Spain lies the emerald Areau lake—whose color experts blame on minnows used by anglers as live bait.
Perched 1,800 meters (about 6,000 feet) near France’s border with Spain lies the emerald Areau lake—whose color 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.
These tiny fish, less than 10 centimeters 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 specializing 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.
