A harmful algal bloom (HAB) of cyanobacteria (commonly called “blue-green algae”, even though they are bacteria rather than algae) occurred at HorseThief Reservoir in late August 2024. HorseThief Reservoir is a 450 acre reservoir located eight miles west of the city of Jetmore in Hodgeman County, Kansas. The Kansas Department of Health and Environment released multiple advisories regarding an HAB at HorseThief Reservoir during August and early September 2024 – releasing, lifting and then reinstating advisories at different severity levels. HorseThief Reservoir has a long record of HABs as documented by KDHE HAB’s historical data. Making matters worse, there is only very limited information on the identity of cyanobacteria that cause HABs in western Kansas.

In short, the opportunity presented itself to take water samples at HorseThief Reservoir with the goal of cultivating and subsequently characterizing the cyanobacteria causing the HAB in the laboratory. Hence, a new graduate student – Louisa Acquah – and I set out to HorseThief Reservoir on Aug-31-2024 to collect water samples of the blooming cyanobacteria. We quickly detected the cyanobacteria bloom near several docks on the eastern shoreline of the lake (Figure 1) and then collected multiple samples (Figure 2; Video 1) to be cultivated in vitro at the microbiology lab at Fort Hays State University.