Steel yourselves , Florida : something massive might be about to beach itself on your shore . Reports are betoken that a giant blob of sargassum seaweed has accumulated in the Atlantic Ocean and is channelise for the US state , bringing with it million of tons of odorous seaweed .
Sargassum is a genus of brown macroalgae ( the fancy parole for seaweed ) that ’s found in temperate and tropic sea across the globe . It can form jumbo clumps like floating island that stretch for mile , providing tax shelter and food to birds , fishes , ocean turtles , and crustaceans .
These gargantuan seaweed islands are the exclusive home for some species like sargassum Pisces , and play like baby’s room grounds for juvenile animate being including mahi mahi andturtles . Eventually , these islands lose their buoyancy and sink to the seafloor where they become a primary food source in the food webs of the deep sea , so they are an authoritative habitat for many species across unlike zones of the urine column .
However , in late years sargassum has become more and more nomadic as warming ocean temperature have seen it blossom forth in unfamiliar waters . It ’s also thought to have see a boom in growth as a result ofclimate changeand alimental overflow from the Amazon and Mississippi . Its out-migration and boom in growth means that it can sap the nutrients and O out of the reefs it engulfs , and thing only get worse when it score ground .
“ Golden tide ” like the ocean of Sargassum bacciferum that ’s currently floating towards Florida can stink to high heaven of a potent blending of rotten egg ( give thanks you hydrogen sulfide gas ) topped off with a piquant ocean zest . As it decompose , it discharge its stored carbon paper into the air , contributing towards the satellite ’s already - too - high CO2emissions .
2022 was a record book - breaking year for sargasso and 2023 may be an even giving year , as old seaweed acts like seed material to get the next harvest off to a bumper start . Mangroves , docks and canals are particularly affected by sargasso as they supply a place for it to bottleneck , creatingdead zonesin which other life ca n’t thrive .
consort to Southern Living , the immense stretch of sargassum presently dominating the Atlantic Ocean has doubled for two months consecutively , now sitting at around8.7 million stacks . That ’s roughly 3,000 Olympian - size swim pools for context , and cause for a terrible 24-hour interval at the beach .
“ Our beach could literally be uncontaminating at 8 a.m. and three to four hour later a giant mat of sargassum the sizing of a mall will come in like the blob , like a Stephen King moving-picture show , ” Tom Mahady , city of Boynton Beach ( Florida ) Ocean Rescue chief , toldUSA Today . " It ’s not pleasant for swimmer . "
Elsewhere in the world , scientists have got to work examine to evolve sustainable ways to tackle halcyon tide . The goal is to find an effective way to pre - cognitive operation seaweed mob up on beach so it can be bend into something useful .
“ It ’s free and there ’s so much of it , so it make sensation to commute it into useful ware . But convert maritime biomass like seaweed usually expect removing it from salt water , washing it in fresh water and drying it , ” say Professor Mike Allen of the University of Exeter and Plymouth Marine Laboratory , who ’s precede the processing task , toThe Guardian . “ That ’s very expensive , so we needed to come up a method acting that would be both economically and environmentally feasible . ”
Keep a weather heart on the horizon , Florida . Something stinking this way comes .
