SALEM — The phone started ringing late last week in the office of Salem Harbormaster Peter Gifford — and it kept on ringing.
"I called the harbormaster on Thursday morning," said Tom Moran, the dockmaster at Pickering Wharf.
The Palmer Cove Yacht Club also was on the line.
"We got probably 30 phone calls" from Salem and Marblehead, Gifford said.
They were all calling about the same thing: a murky brown matter floating in the water all the way from Winter Island to Forest River.
"It was pretty gross," said Ben Kopp, dockmaster at Hawthorne Cove Marina.
The brown stuff turns out to be only algae, but it had boaters and swimmers wondering if it poses a danger. Apparently, it does not.
The state Department of Public Health said "brown marine algae is not known to be toxic," according to Salem Health Agent Joanne Scott.
It is most visible when the sun is shining and may have been exacerbated by foul weather, the health agent said.
"For an algae bloom, you need the right nutrients and sunlight," she said. "With all the rain we had, a lot of rainwater was going into the storm drains and out into the ocean, so that increased the amount of nutrients."
There was speculation that unusually high tides may have played a role.
"When you get a high tide, it gets a lot of other debris floating around," Kopp said.
Although brown algae has been here before, there seemed to be more of it this time. "This is probably the worst anybody can recall in recent times," said Dan Tsoutsouris, commodore of the Palmer Cove Yacht Club.
There were lots of different descriptions of the algae.
"It just kind of looks like muddy water," Gifford said.
"One day it looked like brown pudding right across the water," Moran said.
The good news is that the algae only looks bad.
"I haven't had any complaints of odors," Scott said.
The city has contacted the state Division of Marine Fisheries, which is expected to come out and take a look.
