The plague of algae that has overwhelmed China’s Olympic sailing venue shows no sign of abating. Since first featuring on the Great Beyond on June 27 things seem to have got worse, if anything.

Now over 10,000 people are toiling away on the shore at Qingdao (Xinhua). .“We’re working nine-hour days. I’ve been here six days, and still more and more of it keeps coming," one of them told the BBC.

The BBC also says China “blames the sea for being too salty, the sun for being too hot”. One Chinese official notes that the algae isn’t all bad, saying “The Japanese eat it”.

“We have been working here five days with an average 14 working hours every day. About 3,200 tons of algae are cleared away each day. We are confident in cleaning up the sea before July 15,” says Liu Shuntang, a deputy director of the clean-up campaign (China Daily, with great photos).

Algae isn’t all they have to worry about though…

In the north of China thousands of people are being mobilised to fight a plague of locusts, amid fears the pesky insects could decide to visit Beijing for the Olympics.

Xinhua says 33,000 people will try to eliminate locusts from 1.3 million hectares of grassland in Inner Mongolia (location map).

“With the capital only a few hundred miles away and the Chinese leadership in no mood to take chances, about 200 tons of pesticide, 100,000 sprayers and four aircraft have been thrown into this battle against the bugs,” says the LA Times.

And time, AFP notes, is running out:

The clock that once counted down to the start of the Olympics in the centre of Qingdao, the sailing venue for next month’s Games, now reads zero days, zero hours and zero seconds.

It is likely a malfunction but it underscores the pressure facing the team of 10,000 soldiers and volunteers racing to clean up a foul-smelling green algae covering a third of the sailing course.

China though has promised there will be no problems at the games (Reuters).