Beachgoers are making a stink over odor caused by brown algae

NAHANT -- A dried clamshell. Rotten eggs. Like somebody died here.

The descriptions that beachgoers use to convey the stench on stretches of beach in Lynn and Nahant are vividly varied, always pungent.

The villain s : gelatinous brown algae that have washed ashore for at least a century -- frustrating scientists and visitors to the otherwise lovely beaches.

"A lot of times I walk down from Swampscott to here. Ugh! You want to die," Claudette Donnelly of Lynn said while on a walk along Nahant's Long Beach. "It's like rotten fish."

Now, a team that includes Save the Harbor/Save the Bay, the Northeastern University Marine Science Center in Nahant, and city and state officials is trying to find a viable, long-term solution.

"The algae problem isn't going to go away. However, I think we can address the smell problem," said Bruce Berman, spokesman for Save the Harbor/Save the Bay, a non profit advocacy organization.

Last week, the team met to begin considering long-term strategies that range from the far-fetched -- such as cutting a gap in the long Nahant causeway to allow the tides, and the algae, to flow through -- to the experimental. A few years ago, Cliff Goudey, a research engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sea Grant College Program, developed a device that would vacuum the algae from the shallow water's edge .

Nahant has been trying to tackle the problem on town-owned Short Beach by using a squeegee-type device to collect and bury the algae on site. But this is seen as only a limited, short-term solution.

Long Beach and King's Beach in Lynn are run by the state Department of Conservation and Recreation, which is in charge of cleaning the beaches. Advocates for the beaches and state legislators are pressing the agency to clean them more often to eliminate the source of the stink.

In this year's budget, state legislators directed $85,000 to the Department of Conservation and Recreation for algae cleanup on the Lynn and Nahant beaches, said state Senator Thomas M. McGee, a Lynn Democrat.

"This is a unique problem in this particular area. Nowhere else in the country is there a problem like this," said Robert Tucker , president of the Friends of Lynn and Nahant Beach. He lives on Lynn Shore Drive, where the smell has been particularly bothersome.

"A Band-Aid approach and lip service no longer is going to cut it," he said. "The DCR has to become accountable to remove the algae down there, and relieve that neighborhood of that atrocious odor."

Don Cheney , an associate biology professor at Northeastern University, says the bowl shape and oceanographic conditions of Nahant Bay trap Pilayella littoralis algae there, leaving no escape route. The winds, tides, and currents seem to conspire to force the algae to shore, where they decompose malodorously on the sand in the hot sun.

Wendy Fox, a spokeswoman with the Department of Conservation and Recreation, said state crews clear seaweed regularly -- three times in the past 10 days, for instance.

"We get in there when we see it there," Fox said.

She said the agency would be receptive to more frequent cleanings earlier in the season. "I think we'll certainly look into that if that would help," she said.

But activists are calling for the Department of Conservation and Recreation to attack the algae problem with more urgency in the spring, before the algae have the chance to decompose on the beach or wash out to sea and reproduce.

Many say that this year, the smell seems worse than in past years -- leading some to charge that the Department of Conservation and Recreation acted too late .

"I believe this year, to no one's fault, with miscommunication with a new administration . . . we didn't get that early cleanup," said Representative Steven M. Walsh , a Democrat who represents Lynn and Nahant. "And I think that's why residents and beachgoers this year are experiencing that stink again that we had been controlling. It appears that in the last two beach seasons there were about 10 days of smell in total whereas we've certainly exceeded that already."

The algae and trash the Department of Conservation and Recreation collects can total 15 tons, which is sent out in a dumpster with a waste management company, Fox said. Although researchers had hoped to find a handy reuse for the nuisance algae -- such as compost, biofuel, or food for farmed fish or sea urchins -- the algae have found no useful second life, Cheney said.

The algae are a formidable foe to beat. They can double in biomass every 10 days. And they wash ashore in Lynn and Nahant by the ton. They break apart in the water, reproducing by fragmentation and turning the waves into a muddy but harmless brown muddle.

For regulars and nearby residents, even the on-again, off-again smell can be unbearable.

Recently, Marina Berdak said she could smell the stench from her home on Lynn Shore Drive all through the night.

"I was thinking someone died or something," Berdak said.

Stephanie Ebbert can be reached at ebbert@globe.com.