The largest-ever mat of a thing called sargassum is headed west across the Atlantic toward Florida’s east-coast beaches.
Sargassum is the term for giant patches of floating algae that originate in the Atlantic then head west on currents toward Florida and the Caribbean.
Scientists say they are getting bigger every year – and now comes King of Sargassum, headed for Florida.
The algae mat is estimated to weigh 12 million tons, the biggest one marine researchers have ever seen.
Small sea creatures love to hide in it from predators when it’s floating in the ocean.
OK, so far so good.
But once it washes up on the beaches and begins to dry out and die it smells like rotting eggs.
So this summer when you step on a little bit of seaweed in Old Orchard Beach, thank your lucky starfishes.
It could be a lot worse if you were vacating in the tropics…
And You Thought The Seaweed On Maine’s Beaches Grossed You Out…
It’s a pity that this biomass can’t be used for something, if nothing else, plowed into sand gravelly soil has to make it more fertile and more productive.
I don’t want to think of how many permits would be required, but vacuum it up the way we used to vacuum up herring and bring it ashore it’s not dumping it on land. It’s been burned over so that we don’t have the soil erosion after a forest fire. There’s all kinds of things that can be done with it.
Do not forget that many things, including sea urchins, eat the seaweed. People do too, marine colloids in Rocklin processes it into something that is in putting ice cream and other foods. See: https://maineboats.com/print/issue-129/hidden-life-seaweed
this is why there was so few lobsters 1975-1985 and why there was so many more in recent years — by 1980, the urchins had literally picked the bottom clean and on a sunny day, you can see the gravel bottom 5 to 10 fathom down. Then the urchin divers arrived, the over population of sea urchins ended, and the seaweed returned.
People forget that Cod eat, baby lobsters.
These bundles of floating seaweed are entire ecosystems, it’s a shame they can’t be anchored somewhere.