Algae produces and breathes oxygen, depending on the time of day

I always thought algae was the great producer of oxygen, I remember reading that the myth that the trees was the great producer of oxygen, when it was actually algae that was responsible for 70%-80% of the world’s oxygen supply.

I saw a news piece on freshwater algae depleting the oxygen from the water at night, I had to research it to find out during the day when photosynthesis goes on it produces oxygen, but when it gets dark the plants breathe oxygen.

I see the fish kills being blamed on lack of oxygen, where there is a lot of algae, during the day when the sun is out it the water is filled with a lot of oxygen, only to grow dark and they need to breathe oxygen they produced.
They say not as much as they produced, but there are other forms of life that need that oxygen too, mainly fish.

You can read up at the info here

You can also read it here

And here is an article talking about dissolved oxygen

The news piece came on and they talked about needing more money for a project that was coming up to remove the algae from the streams and rivers. I said removing algae would deplete the oxygen levels, and that’s why they were removing the algae. So I went to research cause I was almost 100%  sure that it was an oxygen producer, and I learned that it was an oxygen breather at night, not a producer.

Well you learn something new everyday.