dennis
Jedi Council Member
A raft of brown-colored seaweed in the Atlantic Ocean is so vast it can be seen from space.
Spanning roughly 5,000 miles — about twice the width of the United States — the thick blanket of sargassum floats between the Gulf of Mexico and the shores of West Africa.
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Scientists say this bloom is one of the largest on record, stoking fears that seaweed invasions of beaches in the coming weeks and months could be particularly severe.
"It’s incredible," said Brian LaPointe, a research professor at Florida Atlantic University’s Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute. "What we’re seeing in the satellite imagery does not bode well for a clean beach year."
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Last summer, the U.S. Virgin Islands declared a state of emergency after unusually high quantities of sargassum caused water shortages on St. Croix.
Other impacts to human health are coming into focus. As the seaweed rots, it releases hydrogen sulfide, which can cause respiratory problems for tourists and residents in the vicinity, LaPointe said.
"Following the big 2018 blooms, doctors in Martinique and Guadeloupe reported thousands of people going to clinics with breathing complications from the air that was coming off these rotting piles of sargassum," he said.
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Typically, floating rafts of sargassum accumulate in a part of the North Atlantic called the Sargasso Sea. The Gulf Stream shuttles the plants around the Atlantic basin, which allows the seaweed to spread and take hold in different parts of the ocean.
Barnes and his University of South Florida colleagues use NASA satellite data to map the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt and its movements. The bloom’s size in recent years would have been inconceivable decades ago, he said.
"Historically, as far back as we have records, sargassum has been a part of the ecosystem, but the scale now is just so much bigger," Barnes said. "What we would have thought was a major bloom five years ago is no longer even a blip."
A giant seaweed bloom that can be seen from space threatens beaches in Florida and Mexico
Seasonal sargassum blooms have exploded in the tropical Atlantic over the past decade and more. This year's is already staggeringly large.www.nbcnews.com
Optical Oceanography Laboratory — College of Marine Science — University of South Florida
satellite imagery sargassum