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What killed 500 fish: Human pee or ice-skating?
photo credit: Fred (Wikimedia Commons)
Fishermen in Germany are blaming swimmers for peeing in a lake near Hamburg, resulting in the deaths of some 500 fish.
The fishermen contend that the large amount of phosphates contained in urine have caused large amounts of algae to grow, suffocating many fish.
Though there may be a scientific basis to the fishermen’s anti-bathers claims, Hamburg’s Urban Development and Environment Authority (BSU) contends that it’s ice skaters who are at fault.
From The Local:
The ice-skaters make a noise that wakes the fish out of hibernation. Then they can’t breathe and freeze. That’s a very common phenomenon.
–BSU spokeswoman Kerstin Graupner
Read more on the ins and outs of Hamburg’s ‘pee gate’ on msnbc.
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I think I’ll buy the pee theory…human pee is a body waste that we expel what difference does it make from human stool? nothing. That’s why we encourage using toilets or urinals in doing our episodes for health and sanitary purposes. And another thing bodies of water like the lake is a stagnant and placid water, unlike the river, or falls which there’s a lot of currents that enable for the water to be purified and really takes time to make its water contaminated. I am referring only to human pee not with the other chemical pollutants.