Nature can do all sorts of crazy things, even turn water bright pink. A bizarre photo was shared to Reddit, which showed the water near a walkway to be bright pink. Think of the color of the medicine Pepto-Bismol.
“Boondall Wetlands looking a little polluted today,” the Reddit user wrote. They went on to explain in a later comment “the water in the rest of the wetlands is a normal color” and “the pink water is directly beside the Nudgee dump.”
The wetlands are located in the Moreton Bay region, north of Brisbane, Australia. While some thought the relevant government department should check in on the area, others suggested that algae could be to blame for the unusual color.
A Brisbane City Council spokesperson said that council officers would visit the site to assess the health of the waterway but said that pink water can occur naturally as a result of environmental factors. “Warmer weather and low rainfall can lead to less water flow and higher salt levels, causing the algae and bacteria in the water to turn pink,” the spokesperson said.
Professor Michele Burford from Griffith University’s Australian Rivers Institute also said that it could be an algal bloom, even reporting that a particular type of algae results in the bright pink color. “Sometimes, if the weather conditions are right and it’s really calm, the algae can sort of swim up to the surface and then get blown in if there’s a little bit of breeze that can just push it into the shore,” she said. “So sometimes you do see that kind of concentration effect happening because of that.”
Although Prof Burford said the color could also mean there is a problem, she ruled it as unlikely since the Boondall Wetlands is “a pretty clean area.”