Science Snippets: Death Via Sea Foam?

Draft script:

A trip to the beach is fun, right? Why else would you put up with sand in your underwear, in your shoes, and every other inconvenient place?

I remember my dog Savanna’s first trip to the beach. She was about three years old when we took her to the Carolina barrier islands. We would walk less than a hundred meters from our rental house to the beach, and Savanna would take a happy jaunt into the ocean. The waves would roll in, and she would run away. The waves would go out, and she would happily chase them, barking the whole way. She thought she was saving her favorite human companions from the nasty ocean. After a few hours, we would return to the rental house for a shower and breakfast. Savanna would sleep soundly until we repeated the activity in the late afternoon. At that point, it was time to save us, again, from those terrible incoming waves.

A Professor at Australia’s University of the Sunshine Coast penned a story for The Conversation. Published 18 March 2025, the article is titled Dozens of surfers fell ill after swimming in seas that turned into a ‘bacterial smoothie’ of sea foam. What was in it?

Here’s the lede, along with two additional sentences that complete the first paragraph of the story: “Two windswept beaches 80km south of Adelaide have been closed to the public after locals reported “more than 100” surfers fell ill on the weekend. Their symptoms included ‘a sore throat, dry cough and irritated eyes’ or blurred vision. Dead sea dragons, fish and octopuses have also washed up on the beaches.”

The next two, one-sentence paragraphs provide an overview from the Professor of Microbiology: “Water samples have been taken for testing and health authorities suspect toxins from an algal bloom may be to blame.

But the ‘mysterious foam’ in the water is a health hazard in its own right.”

Wait, what? The sea foam is a health hazard? Despite Savanna’s beliefs to the contrary, I thought oceans were fun. The Professor provides an explanation in the following paragraph: “My research shows people should not go in the sea when it is foaming. These bacterial smoothies can contain more harmful pathogens than a sewage treatment plant – and you wouldn’t go swimming in sewage.” The reference to this Professor’s research includes a link to a peer-reviewed paper. The peer-reviewed paper indicates a single solution, “the control of pollutants.” I will not be holding my breath.

The article in The Conversation continues with a subsection titled “Beware of sea foam.” It includes this information: “Sea foam doesn’t look dangerous. But looks can be deceiving. This foam is likely to contain a mixture of many different types of microbes and pollutants.

On beaches with lots of sea foam, people should avoid all contact with the water – and definitely avoid surfing or breathing in the contaminated water droplets in the air.

I have been studying sea foams since 2003. In 2021, my PhD student Luke Wright and I published research on our discovery of infectious disease-causing microbes in the sea foams of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland.

Named Nocardiae, these microbes are filamentous bacteria that can cause foaming in wastewater treatment plants, particularly when there’s a high load of fats, oils and greases. We now know the bacteria can cause foaming in the sea too.

We detected 32 strains of Nocardiae in samples of sea foam from beaches at Noosa and south to Caloundra.

Some of these species were new to science. So we named them Nocardia australiensis and Nocardia spumea (‘spumea’ meaning froth or foam).

Nocardiae bacteria are known to cause skin, lung and central nervous system infections in both humans and animals. But the infection usually only takes hold in people with weakened immune systems. The bacteria can cause abscesses in the brain, lungs and liver.

The incubation time can range between one and six months, depending on the strain of bacteria and the health status of the person involved.

This means it will take some time for people to get infected and show symptoms. Long-term medical monitoring is required to detect the condition, as it can be masked by other disease-causing microbes such as the infectious agent that causes tuberculosis.”

Maybe Savanna was right after all. The ocean is dangerous. The bacteria in sea foam causes infections and abscesses.

The article in The Conversation describes the great difficulty in addressing this problem. The ocean is a relatively open system, which makes control of bacteria an almost impossible task. Polluted beaches are common, as the Professor explains in the article. Here’s the bottom line, found in the final paragraph: “As long as humanity continues to produce pollution, the problem will increase. It will also worsen as the world warms, because sea foams like it hot.”

I cannot imagine humans will stop producing pollution. In addition, the world is certain to continue warming, as pointed out by the designed-to-fail Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its 24 September 2019 IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate. In this report, the IPCC concluded an overheated ocean was responsible for the irreversibility of climate change. That was nearly six years ago. No evidence indicates the situation will improve any time soon. In fact, the IPCC concluded Earth is amid the most abrupt event in planetary history less than a year before its IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate was printed.

As southwestern American writer, public speaker, and public figure Edward Abbey pointed out, “when the situation is hopeless, there’s nothing to worry about.” I cannot imagine a situation more hopeless than living on a planet that is amid abrupt, irreversible climate change. There is no way out of this mess. As the ongoing Mass Extinction Event continues, more species will lose habitat. At some point, probably in the near future, the list of species will include the self-proclaimed wise ape, Homo sapiens.