The red algae bloom in the San Francisco Bay killing hundreds, if not thousands, of fish since last week likely won’t end for at least a couple of weeks, as the warm weather gets hotter going into Labor Day weekend, according to experts.

Dead fish line the shores of Lake Merritt prior to a cleanup by city public works crews. (Photo courtesy of city of Oakland via Bay City News)

Environmental agencies said this week that the bloom — which has been reported from the Dumbarton Bridge to Oakland’s Lake Merritt and the Alameda Estuary, Oyster Point, Baywinds Park in Foster City, Hayward, Keller Beach, Point Molate, and Sausalito — may come from a harmful species called Heterosigma akashiwo.

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Keith Burbank is currently a fulltime reporter covering Alameda County and Oakland news for Bay City News. He has also worked on the Data Points project for Local News Matters, finding trends and stories about the region through data. In 2019, he was a California Fellow at the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism, producing a series about homeless deaths in Santa Clara County. He worked as a swing shift editor for the newswire for several years as well. Outside of journalism, Keith enjoys computer programming, math, economics and music.