Nearly 200 people were unwell after bathing in Ténès on Sunday, on the northwest coast of Algeria, and had to receive hospital treatment following possible marine pollution, according to local authorities and medical.
Three beaches were closed, as well as a local desalination plant, and an investigation was opened by the attorney general of the court of Chlef, the wilaya (prefecture) on which Ténès depends.
The victims suffered from nausea, fever, and redness in the eyes, according to Lakhdar Seddas, the wali (prefect) of Chlef. They were all able to leave the hospital.
“The victims, people who were bathing at the central beach of Ténès, would have inhaled a gas which quickly spread thanks to the wind blowing throughout the afternoon of Sunday”, explained the director of the health of the prefecture, Doctor Nasreddine Benkartalia, quoted by the official APS agency.
For his part, the prefect did not exclude any hypothesis. “But the most plausible is that relating to the spill of a boat off Ténès,” Seddas told a local radio station.
According to the private information site Ennahar Online, it is a cargo ship flying the Tanzanian flag, the Barhom II, which had set sail from the port of Sète (South of France).
Another hypothesis: a microscopic toxic alga, according to Professor Réda Djebar, from the faculty of biological sciences at the University of Bab Ezzouar in Algiers.
In a post published on his Facebook page, Mr. Djebar recalls similar cases in Mostaganem (north-west) in 2009 and on several other beaches around the Mediterranean.
The culprit, according to him, would be a cyanobacterium called Ostreopsis Ovata. These algae proliferate in the Mediterranean when the temperature is high, as is currently the case.
Teams of divers were dispatched to the site in search of toxic discharges. Thirty-six Civil Protection agents, including professional divers, were poisoned, according to a rescue official.
A delegation from the Ministry of the Environment took “air and water samples at the port (of Tenès), the beaches, the wadi” and installations likely to cause pollution, according to an official statement.
