The east coast of Florida has been threatened by an enormous “algae blob,” in keeping with a number of information sources. The New York Put up reported that “huge seaweed bloom begins washing ashore on Florida seashores” CNN warned that an alga bloom twice the dimensions of the U.S. is headed for Florida.
Alternatively, an oceanographer advised reporters that this assertion is sensational in doable each means.
Dr. Yuyuan Xie makes use of satellites to review sargassum, a genus of enormous brown algae that floats round in island-like plenty. “There isn’t any ‘seaweed blob,’” Xie, who works within the Optical Oceanography Laboratory on the College of South Florida, advised reporters. “However there’s a 5,000-mile Nice Atlantic Sargassum Belt,” which, Xie says, is comprised of lower than one-tenth of 1 p.c seaweed.
In different phrases, solely 0.1 p.c of the belt is made up of sargassum; the remaining 99.9 p.c is “sargassum free,” or just ocean water.
The east coast of Florida and the Florida Keys have solely been reached by solely a “tiny portion of the seaweed inside the belt,” Xie mentioned, and it “is just not shifting towards Florida” like a fearsome monster.”
Sargassum seaweed belts usually are not technically a brand new phenomenon. In keeping with a examine printed within the peer-reviewed journal Science, Christopher Columbus was the primary to explain floating belts of Sargassum seaweed within the fifteenth century. In keeping with consultants, these “mats” have been “restricted” and “discontinuous” in latest centuries.
In 2011, nonetheless, they reappeared extra ceaselessly and extra densely, leading to an 8,850-kilometer-long bloom that stretched from West Africa throughout the Caribbean Sea to the Gulf of Mexico. In keeping with the researchers, that is the most important macroalgal bloom ever recorded. “Such recurrent blooms might turn out to be the brand new regular.”
Xie and his colleagues use NASA satellites to measure the Sargassum algae inhabitants and observe its annual cycle. Xie described the phenomenon as “uncommon” in comparison with a decade in the past as a result of “such a belt didn’t exist” Nonetheless, this belt is typical, because the sargassum begins one other annual cycle per its exercise over the previous 5 years.
The Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) notes that Sargassum is completely different from regular algae, that are usually held to the seafloor by root-like “holdfasts” In distinction, Sargassum floats on the ocean floor as a result of it doesn’t anchor itself to the underside.
These sargassum belts typically cowl miles of ocean floor and may function a floating habitat for creatures corresponding to sea turtles, fowl species, crabs, and shrimp. Even a sure species of frogfish, referred to as the “sargassum fish,” is discovered solely on this surroundings.
