Hundreds of dead fish line the shores of Lake Granbury. The victims of a single-celled organism called Prymnesium Parvum or Golden Alga. It produces a toxin that affects gill-breathing organisms, but does not affect people.

"It's very small, about the size of a blood cell and it can not only do photosynthesis, as all plants can and make its own food, but this one can also absorb and eat other organisms. And if it has trouble finding food it releases a toxin and that's the toxin that's causing the fish kill," Texas Parks and Wildlife Department biologist Joan Glass said.

Active golden alga blooms have caused fish kills in nearly a dozen water bodies in north-central Texas including one at Lake Texoma on the Oklahoma border.

"I've been working with golden alga for about 16 years," Glass said.

In a recent workshop between Texas Parks and Wildlife and the Oklahoma Department of Conservation, scientists joined forces to combat the golden alga problem and discuss ways to inform the public.

"This allows us to combine our resources in a time where resources are limited at all state agencies," Texas Parks and Wildlife Department biologist David Sager said.

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	Golden Alga The single-cell organism produces a toxin that kills fish and other gill-breathing animals.

Golden alga affects mostly smaller forage fish like shad but game species can also be affected and that has Oklahoma on alert.

"You have an excess of 4,000 fishermen each year with the fishery being worth a value at $25 million or $30 million a year, and that's a renewable resource that goes in year in and year out. It's one of the major industries that we have," Paul Mauck of the Oklahoma Department. of Conservation said.

So far, no one has found a practical way to stop golden alga blooms and the fish kills they cause, but scientists hope research and teamwork will eventually find efficient solutions.

"These are natural types of occurrences. They've happened before in other lakes and those lakes have come back," Sager said.