Currently stretching across most of the Atlantic, the blob is traveling west, and will begin to pile up on beaches in the coming months. Get ready for some rotten egg stench.
A blob of sargassum seaweed thousands of miles long is headed to Florida, the Caribbean and eventually the Gulf of Mexico, scientists say.
Though common for centuries — Christopher Columbus spotted sargassum floating in the middle of the Atlantic on his way to the Americas in the 15th century — 2011 saw a surge in the algae’s surface area that has continued to grow, according to a 2019 paper by scientists at the University of South Florida.
The sargassum zone also has shifted from the Sargasso Sea, a massive area of the Atlantic off the U.S. southern seaboard, south to tropical waters, which may help explain the growth. The belt starts growing in winter and builds up as it moves west on equatorial currents, and peaks in July, Lapointe said.
Starting in 2014, there was a large uptick in nitrogen and phosphate coming out of the Amazon, he said. Other nutrient sources include the Congo River and the Mississippi River. Sargassum mats in the open ocean can benefit wildlife. Whole food chains, from microorganism, crabs and small fish, on up to mahi-mahi, tuna, wahoo, marlin and sharks, can gather under and around them to feed on one another.
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