
RocketNews 24/Business Insider:
Every summer for the past eight years, huge algae blooms have taken over the beaches near Qingdao, a city in the Shandong province of China.
The bright green stuff has blanketed at least 13,500 square miles of ocean this summer, according to the South China Morning Post.
And this isn’t the first time it’s happened. In 2013, the blooms got as big as the state of Connecticut! Check out this year’s algae infestation.
The algae blooms every year on the beaches in Qingdao, on China’s northeast coast between Beijing and Shanghai. The first blooms appeared in 2007 after seaweed farmers working south of Qingdao switched up how they clean off their rafts.

Farmers use the rafts to make nori, a type of edible seaweed that’s popular in Japan. When the rafts are cleaned off in the spring, along comes the algae, which thrives off the leftover seaweed nutrients and the warm conditions in the Yellow Sea.

Researchers think the reason for the algae growth in Qingdao is that seaweed farmers started cleaning their rafts farther offshore. This gave the algae the chance to spread out and make its way to the shore up near the city.

Ever since the large blooms started popping up, tourists have viewed it as a summer tradition to head down to the beach and play in the algae.

While it’s a ton of fun to play in, it’s actually connected to pollution from nearby agriculture and industrial plants that gets in the water.

But luckily, there are some ways to use the algae to benefit the community: It makes for a good fertilizer and green energy source.

Cleaning it up is no small feat — it has to be done quickly, because the algae begins to stink like rotten eggs when it decomposes. Here, workers scoop up the algae during the 2014 bloom.

It’s not just stinky; it’s also incredibly heavy. Workers who cleaned up the 2013 bloom collected more than 19,800 tons of the stuff — about the same weight as 9,900 cars!

If left where it is, the algae can spread to other beaches and become an even bigger environmental problem.

They call Taishan Dong “The Great Wall”. At seven feet tall, he is an absolute monster and surely a fearsome sight in the ring for any other heavyweight boxer. Just last Friday, American Lance Gauch found out the hard way what it is like to be on the receiving end of the menacing fist of the giant Chinaman. Dong moved his professional record to 5-0 with the win – a win that the American will probably not remember too much about.
To be fair to Gauch, it appeared a mismatch all along, giving up more than 30 centimetres, or 12 inches, in height difference. Gauch did his best to avoid carnage from the big guy’s fists for most of the first round, but what was perhaps inevitable came thirty seconds before the bell to end the opening round was due.
Reports said that the referee of the fight, Ray Corona, didn’t bother with a count, and called the fight off immediately. Interestingly, some reports suggested that Gauch, whose record stands at 5-9-2, was actually winning the round up to the point of the almighty punch.
There was some concern following the knockout as it appears that Gauch was in some serious trouble. It was not only a knockout in boxing terms, but a literal knockout which saw the American lay prone on the floor for about ten minutes before being taken to by a stretcher to hospital.
It was a scary but awesome display of the damage “The Great Wall of China” is capable of. At 130kg, or 286 pounds, Dong is a monster from the Gansu province. However, he has relocated to the United States to further his boxing career, and has become a part of Oscar De La Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions since giving them his signature last year. Although playing a strategic game with who Dong is pitted against, Golden Boy believes him to be a legitimate heavyweight contender.
“Mr De La Hoya wanted to open the Chinese market because he believes in me,” Dong told Fox Sports earlier this year. “He knows I can become a champ”.
Dong is often compared to his countryman, Yao Ming – often referred to as the Yao Ming of boxing. Both men are huge. With his professional record now at 5-0, Dong’s first two bouts were both knockout followed by another two which went the distance. During the latest short fight, his opponent Gauch did look incredibly underprepared to meet someone like Dong.
Perhaps predictably due to his height, Dong is said to have initially entertained ideas of becoming a basketballer, before attempting kickboxing, to eventually settle on boxing. Those in the know say he has considerable hand speed and athleticism for a man of his size, although nobody got the chance to witness much of that during the latest fight.
“Nowadays I am more patient and can overcome any challenges that arise during the fight. I will give the best of myself. I will try to understand my opponent’s strategy from the beginning and therefore defeat him,” he said in an interview with Fox Sports. “My maximum potential has not been revealed yet. That is why I train hard, in order to become a world champion”.