h3>In the non-tidal Baltic Sea, the daily wash from the regular ferry traffic along the archipelago shores creates an algal zonation similar to a tidal shore. The regular wash of the rocky shores bordering the ferry route results in marked green algal zone. In the springtime it is composed of e.g. Spirogyra species and in the summer by Cladophora glomerata and Enteromorpha/Ulva species. Just below the green algal belt a zone of Fucus vesiculosus is found. The swell created by the ferry traffic is enough to keep the thalli wet and not drying out. The daily wash from the ferry traffic also affects the communities in rock pools. If you want to know more about these changes have a look at the article by Östman and Rönnberg Effects of ships’ waves on rock-pools in the Åland …

A stone with Spirogyra spp. collected from the Askö laboratory a week before.

This algal belt could be observed from the ferry last week when I was travelling from Mariehamn, Åland to Stockholm,Sweden. The other less positive effects from the traffic is the strong erosion of sandy coastal parts where threes are falling down and the shores are disappearing, leaving larger stones and boulders along the shore.