Phytoplankton blooms - a "fever" of the Baltic ecosystem [commun.]

This paper examines the phenomenon of Baltic phytoplankton blooms in a new light. They are investigated from the standpoint of the author's own studies of chlorophyll and its derivatives in deep Baltic sediments, and of the influence of inorganic and organic pollutants on unicellular algae. Algal blooms in the Baltic should be perceived as perfectly normal phenomena that are neither time- nor space-specific. At the same time, they are signals given by the basin that something - not necessarily the level of nutrients - has changed in the environment and are a response of the ecosystem to that change.