Not that it matters – the banal triviality is part of the story’s appeal – but the New York Times thinks it’s gotten to the bottom of what caused the algae bloom in the Reflecting Pool. It wasn’t just hot weather and dark blue paint – it was the removal of the ozone nanobubblers.
Oxygenizing water keeps algae at bay, and using ozone – the bubbles are incredibly tiny, much smaller than the diameter of a human hair – speeds up the process. The contractor had machines doing just that early this month, until a promotional event for Trump’s UFC fight was scheduled for the Lincoln Memorial.
Before the event, the National Park Service asked Greenwater Services, which won a $1.7 million no-bid contract to install the nanobubblers, to remove them, according to two people briefed on the decision. The people asked for anonymity because they feared retaliation from the administration. The Park Service did not provide a reason for the removal, but it coincided exactly with the promotional event, which drew crowds to the Reflecting Pool.
Photos from that evening showed the pool without the hoses or enormous machines working to keep the water clean. The water looked dark blue. But by the time the purification systems were reinstalled 36 hours later, enormous algae blooms were starting to spread unchecked, turning the water green. Once the algae started growing, it proved difficult to eliminate, [e]ven with the nanobubblers back online…
So all along, the solution was tiny bubbles.
They certainly helped Don Ho, who became famous after recording “Tiny Bubbles” in 1966. Born in Honolulu long before the archipelago became a state, Ho started out playing and singing at his mother’s bar in Waikiki in the 1950s, just as Hawaii was becoming an affordable tourist destination, and got enough attention to land a record contract. Execs brought him to the mainland and installed him in Las Vegas.
Ho’s act leaned heavily on his island roots, but “Tiny Bubbles” became his signature song despite having no connection to Hawaii. The composer had tried to sell his ditty about champagne to Lawrence Welk, who called his ouevre “champagne music,” but the bandleader turned him down. Ho only recorded it because his attempts to record “Born Free” weren’t working to anyone’s satisfaction, so they turned to “Tiny Bubbles” as a substitute. The tune only reached No. 57 on the Hot 100, but the LP stayed on the charts for nearly a year. It became something of an albatross for Ho, who years later was caught on a hot mic saying “God, I hate that song.”
