What are the ecological and economic impacts?
It is too early to tell at this time what the impacts may be in Arizona. Potentially, the negative impacts may be significant at a particular water, especially in larger lakes and reservoirs. While golden alga toxins can affect all species and sizes of fish, most of the fish killed at Saguaro, Canyon and Apache lakes have been a 2-6 inch forage fish, threadfin shad. These fish grow quickly and lay many eggs for rapid reproduction. Because of this, a reservoir can recover, even from a massive fish kill, if the waterbody has ample time between fish kills. However, forage fish do form the basis of the food chain and on-going fish kills may harm larger game fish in two ways, directly by toxicity and indirectly by reduced food supply. Most fish kills, however, do not continually affect the entire lake and different parts of the lake may continue to support excellent fishing.
