Masses of tangled brown seaweed, collectively weighing about 13 million tons, that typically float in the Atlantic Ocean are once again drifting toward shore, where they could pose a significant threat to coastal environments and beach communities.
Masses of tangled brown seaweed that typically spend most of the year floating around in the open waters of the Atlantic Ocean are once again drifting toward shore, where they couldKnown as the great Atlantic Sargassum belt, the seaweed clusters collectively weigh about 13 million tons, according to most recent calculations — and are large enough to be seen from space.
“The projection that we have for this year is that it’s going to be at least as big, if not a little bit bigger, than last year’s bloom,” said Barnes, who’s been tracking the belt’s size and path. “But last year was pretty bad already.”Sargassum is athat’s abundant in the ocean. Its ability to float comes from the small berrylike orbs sprouting from the plant — gas-filled structures mostly containing oxygen.
The great Atlantic Sargassum belt refers to a formation of the floating seaweed that typically extends from the west coast of Africa toward Brazil and around the Caribbean region, said Brian Lapointe, a research professor at Florida Atlantic University who has studied sargassum for more than 40 years. Lapointe estimates that the belt is about 5,000 miles long and 300 miles wide.Experts emphasize that it is not a single, giant blob, but rather a collection of blobs.
The patches can vary widely in size, Lapointe said. Some clumps might be the size of a basketball while others can extend for hundreds of meters or even miles, depending on ocean conditions.Recent satellite images show patches just south of islands in the northern Caribbean and offshore of the eastern Yucatán Peninsula, Barnes said.
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