Good news for seaweed fans who gather in large numbers on the beach and sting their eyes, noses and throats with a stench like rotten eggs.(opens in new tab): Masses of algae known as sargassum are accumulating again on Florida’s coastline. And there are reasons to suspect that human-caused environmental destruction may be the cause.
In fact, live views of Florida’s 2023 Spring Break celebrations will let you see the sargassum pile up in real time. Below you can see part of the miles of sargassum streak running down Fort Lauderdale Beach. Listen to this live camera early in the morning and you can see attendants driving farm equipment over it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBvHHNXXeqw
Yes, these sargassum accumulations are new
This didn’t happen before.
Historically, sargassum was known to float on giant brown rafts in a section of the North Atlantic named the Sargasso Sea in honor of the sargasso. and (if you’ll excuse my editing) are home to the sargassum fish, the ocean’s most underrated predator in terms of sheer malice.
However, according to a 2015 report(opens in new tab) By Geoffrey Shell, Deborah Goodwin and Amy Ciudad, published in the magazine oceanographyOn the coasts of the Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, West Africa and Brazil, parts of the coastline, including tourist beaches, suddenly became deep. They were piled up to a height of one meter.
“We noticed that this seaweed looks different from the familiar Sargassum flitans and S. natans from 20 years of sailing in the Sargasso, Caribbean and Florida Straits,” the report said. In other words, this was supposed to be an unprecedented accumulation of an unprecedented type of sargassum.
Human ecological havoc may be responsible for sargassum accumulation
More research is needed to be able to say with certainty exactly what causes this apparently new phenomenon, but scientists have found it.
Oceanographers now know from satellite photography studies that this sargassum did not come from the Sargasso Sea, but from further south.It’s patchy stripes across a section of the ocean called the Atlantic Sargasso Belt. AtlanticEd Yong of(opens in new tab) The Belt appears to take advantage of the runoff of rivers in Brazil and West Africa that dump agricultural fertilizers into the sea. It may have transformed into a giant, self-perpetuating seaweed monster with
Amy Ciudad, an oceanographer at Eckerd University, told Yong that the situation was “probably the new normal.”
Sargassum is a growing problem
NASA satellite imagery shows a record-breaking number of years since 2011, and the flowers are getting bigger and bigger.(opens in new tab)Last June, more than 24 million tons of sargassum(opens in new tab) It broke the previous record set in 2018. University of South Florida oceanographer Brian Barnes told NBC News affiliate South Florida.(opens in new tab) 2023 is going to be the year of the monster again. “I’ve been observing the flowers getting bigger over the last few months. It’s possible they’re the same or not as big as the flowers I saw last year,” he said.
Oh, that rotten egg smell is from hydrogen sulfide, health officials told local Florida news(opens in new tab), not just sting people’s eyes and noses. Too much exposure can cause “headaches, poor memory, fatigue, and balance problems.”
and some sargassum(opens in new tab) Known to be eaten by humans, according to the Florida Department of Health(opens in new tab) no one has an eating business this Hondawara, “because it may contain large amounts of heavy metals such as arsenic and cadmium.”
