Sea turns red in study of currents

Alex Coolman

NEWPORT BEACH -- The surf turned red Monday at the mouth of the Santa Ana

River as a group of researchers and municipal authorities carried out a

test to study water currents in the area.

Officials from the city of Huntington Beach, the Orange County Sanitation

District and the County of Orange gathered to dump into the water about

22 gallons of florescent magenta dye at the river’s mouth and at the

mouth of Talbert Marsh in Huntington Beach.

As the dye from the Santa Ana River spread out into the ocean, it quickly

moved south, adding a pink tint to the waves crashing on the shores of

Newport Beach.

Gathering information about the motion of the river’s flow, said

organizers of the study, was exactly the point.

Burt Jones, a professor of biological sciences at USC, said the release

of the dye was one of two tests planned for the weeks ahead and is being

performed in conjunction with extensive testing for bacteria.

Tracking the flow of the dye, as well as monitoring the motion of oranges

that were released into the current, could help researchers understand

more about the ways that runoff from the watershed interacts with the

ocean currents.

This knowledge, Jones said, might be useful in preventing another summer

of beach closures of the sort that plagued Huntington Beach last year.

“We’re hoping that we’ve gotten a handle on what the source of the

problem is,” he said.

Although the origin of the contamination that forced last summer’s

coastal closures has never been definitively determined, Huntington Beach

spokesman Richard Barnard said the city now believes urban runoff was the

culprit.

And if that hypothesis is correct, said Nancy Gardner, co-founder of the

Newport Beach chapter of the Surfrider Foundation, the streak of red dye

drifting southward is something beachgoers here should be concerned

about.

“It makes you realize that there’s not some magic dam between us [and

Huntington Beach],” she said.

Though last year’s currents may have swept river pollution north to

Huntington, Gardner said she doesn’t believe Newport is immune to the

problems of runoff.

“I think we were lucky last year,” she said. “Very lucky.”