The pink lake stink

By Claire Chang and Joshua Yan Dec. 14, 2023

In late October, the waters of Hawaii's Kealia Pond turned pink, heightening concerns about climate change and the state’s ongoing drought. Located in the Kealia Pond National Wildlife Refuge in Maui, the pond has been crowded by visitors since its pink waters appeared on social media, with many taking interest in the peculiarity of the lake’s transformation.

Initially, it was believed that the pink color may have resulted from an algae bloom. An overgrowth of algae prevents other life from coexisting in the pond by blocking sunlight and consuming large amounts of oxygen. However, lab tests showed that algae were not responsible for the color change; instead, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed that halobacteria could be the cause after analyzing water sample tests conducted by the University of Hawaii. In high salinity conditions, halobacteria emit red and purple carotenoid pigments, which turn water pink. However, this hypothesis has yet to be confirmed by DNA test.

According to AP News, the Kealia Pond currently has a salinity level twice as high as that of seawater. Halobacteria require high salinity to survive and grow, making the pond a suitable habitat for these organisms. This is the first time Refuge staff are witnessing a color change, even with previous droughts and high salinity conditions, meaning further investigation is needed to determine why a pink pond color did not occur before.

“Since the lake’s salinity is the issue, one way that the pink color could dissipate is by manually pouring more water in and diluting the salt concentration. If they installed an irrigation system, Refuge workers would be able to control water levels and lessen the impact of severe droughts on natural ecosystems, ” Sophomore Stephen King said.

Pink lakes like the one in Maui exist everywhere around the world, all for similar reasons. In Australia, halobacteria is also the cause of Lake Hillier’s pink hue. In other places, like Lake Retba in Senegal and Lake Tuz Golu in Turkey, the odd color is caused by different microorganisms, namely the microalgae Dunaliella Salina. Other pink lakes can be found in places such as Tanzania, Russia, Ukraine and more.Day by day, climate change is becoming increasingly prevalent throughout the world. As conditions become more erratic and unpredictable, pink lakes like Kealia Pond may be seen more around the globe.

“Both governments and the public have to play a part in protecting the environment. Citizens need to monitor how much water and other natural resources they use, and community leaders should fund programs like renewable energy to prevent further environmental damage,” Freshman Rishabh Kaushikkar said.

The global AI industry is entirely dependent on just a few U.S. companies producing GPUs, as the GPUs provide immense amounts of processing power needed to train enormous AI models. Even with the increased efficiency of specialized GPUs, University of Washington researchers estimated that training Chat-GPT consumed 10 gigawatt-hours of electricity—enough to power a city of one million people for almost eight hours—for powering and cooling the chips alone. As future AI models become even more complicated, the need for GPUs will only continue to increase. The necessity of GPUs in AI development has skyrocketed Nvidia’s profits, which holds a virtual monopoly on the AI chip market.

Amidst the U.S.-China trade war, advanced computer chips have become a battleground as the U.S. seeks to limit the growth of China’s computing industry. The U.S. hopes to prevent advanced chips—especially those designed for AI applications—from being used by China for “military purposes and modernization,” per CNBC. Starting on Oct. 7, 2022, the U.S. limited the specifications of GPUs that could be exported to China, primarily Nvidia’s flagship H100 and A100 GPUs.

In an attempt to work around such restrictions, Nvidia introduced H800 and A800 versions of the aforementioned GPUs in Nov. 2022, which featured much of the same specifications, but with an inter-GPU data transfer rate of half the original versions. The downgraded chips were in high demand by Chinese markets, as numerous tech companies including Chinese giants like Alibaba and Tencent and even Linhua Health, an MSG company, all sought to claim a piece of the generative AI technology market. To counteract these new Nvidia products, the U.S. government expanded export restrictions on Oct.17 that have left the stockpiles of A800 and H800 chips unsellable to Chinese customers.

Even with the tightened restrictions on export-bound GPUs, Nvidia plans to continue exporting AI chips to China; it is launching the new H20, L20 and L2 chips which comply with U.S. sanctions. Nvidia projects that billions of dollars will be made with the exports, and the company does not plan to halt sales while demand is still sky-high.

AI remains the fastest and most unpredictable field in tech today, and as the all-encompassing demand for processing power continues, so does Nvidia’s pocketbook. With their stock prices tripling this year alone, Nvidia may be the winner in the technological conflict between the U.S. and China.

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About the Contributor

Kyan Wang is a junior at Leland High School and is the page editor for Science & Tech and Feature US for The Charger Account. When not being crushed by imminent deadlines, he enjoys listening to music, wasting away on his computer, and running on the rare occasion that he is not debilitatingly injured.