But algae began creeping back in the mid-1990s, and the blooms have gotten progressively bigger.
But fuel from algae might make no less sense than trying to make fuel from prairie grasses or corn cobs or wood chips.
The oysters happily grazed on the algae, but there was just too much of it.
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Little Loch Broom also has a bed of the coral-like algae maerl, but the scientists said it was unlikely to be significantly affected beyond a certain depth.
He is by no means the only person to be working on the idea of turning algae into biofuels, but he has one or two particular ideas about how to do it.
Studies have been carried out into creating biodiesel from algae for 20 years, but limitations currently prevent it being used on a large scale.
But the company has discovered that its algae can be processed into other useful things: feed for fish farms, protein powders for food supplements and omega-3 fatty acids used in a variety of supplements and pharma products.
He describes how, to his great alarm, the algae started to spread, slowly but inexorably, choking off all indigenous life in its path.
But get over the ick factor: Aurora Algae has the potential to produce a wide range of food, pharma and fuel products from giant ponds of algae.
Scientists are studying how the algae outbreak might have affected fish populations but have reached no firm conclusions, said Jeff Tyson, Lake Erie program administrator with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.
Also, a recent study found that the DHA component of fish oil from algae helped people with minor memory impairment, but this needs to be replicated in order to be more definitive, he said.
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Algae typically do not produce oil under normal conditions, but they do when they are stressed.
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The idea that this algae protein might be used to control human cells was obvious, but there were all sorts of reasons that it might not work.
Those policies led to a drastic algae drop-off in Lake Erie, which had been declared all but dead.
But they did more than just survive in the grass green water, dense with algae and other substances, known and unknown.
But GreenShift's chairman and controlling shareholder, Kevin Kreisler, has dreams, and the algae venture is just one of them.
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