A giant seaweed is floating in the Atlantic and is heading toward Florida. According to a geoscientist and coastal ecologist, the 8,046-kilometer (5,000 miles) wide blob of seaweed could create a big problem.
Huge Seaweed Heading Toward Florida Beaches
Stephen Leatherman, known as Dr. Beach, warned those in Florida about the giant seaweed or sargassum heading toward the state. Aside from the nuisance of cleaning it up, it could stink up the beaches because it smells like rotten eggs, according to Newsweek.
Leatherman said people would hate its smell. He noted that it was not seaweed as bits and pieces of crabs and small fish caught it. Healthy patches of sargassum serve as critical habitats for fish, crabs, shrimp, turtles, and birds.
The expert said the blob of seaweed is a natural ecosystem on its own. However, the stuff that gets beached rots and stinks.
When sargassum moves closer to the coast, it can wreak havoc on local ecosystems, smothering coral reefs and changing the water's pH balance, NPR added.
Also, it poses a significant problem to Florida because it will likely hit the beach as the tourism season begins. It will deter visitors and may cost more to clear.
Leatherman noted that the beaches are narrow, and the since they are not wide, the giant seaweed could cover them up. He recounted a similar incident in Cancún a couple of years ago. It required 2,000 people in the Navy to go out and pitchforks the weeds to clean the beach so that they could see the sand.
Aside from the smell, the seaweed could pose a risk to people's health. When sargassum washes ashore and begins to decompose, it will release hydrogen sulfide and ammonia gas emissions, which may cause problems to individuals with a sensitive respiratory system and asthma.
It is unlikely to cause severe danger to humans, but it could be a hint that worse things are to come.
Experts Have Been Tracking Sargassum
Several experts have been tracking the blobs of seaweed for over a decade, and they noticed that it's natural for them to occur in the ocean. However, there are factors that cause them to grow larger.
Dr. Brian Lapointe, a Florida Atlantic University's Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute researcher, told CNN that sargassum bloomed early this year and doubled in size between December and January. The mass in January was larger than they have ever seen since 2011.
Lapointe said it was an entirely new oceanographic phenomenon, and it created a problem for tourism in the Caribbean, where it piled up on beaches up to 5 or 6 feet. In Barbados, the locals use 1,600 dump tracks daily to clean the beaches of seaweed and make them suitable for tourists and recreational activities.
The blob will pass through the Caribbean and up into the Gulf of Mexico during the summer and on the beaches of Florida around July.
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