Loose rafts of brown seaweed, about twice the width of the United States, trickle across the Caribbean Sea. Buckets of buoyant algae are now washing up on Florida’s east coast beaches earlier than usual, raising scientists’ concerns about what might happen in the coming months.
Seaweed consists of algal species in the genus SargassumThese species grow as mats of algae clumps that float through tiny air-filled sacs attached to leafy structures. It forms a band between and then rides the current to the west. Scientists say reports of large amounts of seaweed crashing onto shorelines are exaggerated. Sargassum Algae are scattered throughout the ocean, and much of it never reaches the sandy beaches of the coast. Sargassum bloom. Communities say seaweed can cause serious problems when it gets washed up on beaches and begins to rot.
Annual Sargassum “2018 was a record year, and it’s been a few years of significant years since,” says Brian Lapointe, an oceanographer at Florida Atlantic University who has studied seaweed for decades. say. “This is the new normal and we have to adapt.”
The seaweed “mass” is called the Atlantic Sargassum belt, and although it’s sprawling, algae within the belt only cover about 0.1% of the water’s surface, says Chuanmin Hu, an oceanographer at the University of South Florida. say.satellites to study Sargassum Nearly 20 years.
Hu and his colleagues used data collected by NASA satellites, including Terra and Aqua, to Sargassum The Atlantic follows an annual cycle that peaks monthly, usually in June. According to the team’s calculations, last year seaweed broke the record for the highest amount ever recorded in the Atlantic Ocean, with about 22 million tons found across the ocean.
According to Hu, about 6 million tons of Sargassum He says he is confident the March mass will be higher. “There should be more this month, no doubt,” Fu says. “Even in his first two weeks, the volume increased.”
At sea, Hu says. Sargassum It is an important habitat for fish and turtles, among other marine life. He calls the belt a “moving ecosystem.” Hu adds that even a small fraction of the seaweed found in the Atlantic Ocean is washed up on shore.
But beaches in Fort Lauderdale and the Florida Keys have already reported Sargassum Lapointe said it’s the beaches that have a lot of sediment this year and where seaweed can be a problem. There, he says, algae rot and release chemicals such as hydrogen sulfide gas, which smells like rotten eggs. When inhaled, the gas can cause headaches and can irritate a person’s eyes, nose and throat. People with asthma or other breathing problems may be more sensitive to this effect, according to the Florida Department of Health. has raised concerns about
“This is in the very early stages Sargassum It’s the season to see that much coming, so I think that’s fueling the concern about what’s to come,” Lapointe says.
Hu says yes Sargassum Volumes cannot be predicted until a few months ahead, so it is still too far away to predict a seasonal peak for this summer. But researchers expected seaweed to be abundant this year, as they saw higher-than-average amounts of seaweed, even in the winter lull.
And the Atlantic certainly produces much more Sargassum in recent decades than historically. Lapointe is Sargassum Rising water levels in recent years may be partly related to nutrient-rich water flowing into rivers and oceans from land where seaweed can be fertilized. He adds that it remains.
“This has been going on for over a decade and we haven’t made much progress in better understanding all these nutrient and climate factors,” he says. is to be.”
