Why a Massive Sargassum Seaweed Belt Extending from Africa to Florida has been a thing since 2011
For the last seven years a Southern Florida Optical Oceanography Institute has been using NOAA funding to research and track seaweed, more specifically floating brown pelagic seaweed known as Sargassum.
This so-called macro-algae has been increasing in surface area of the ocean covered and and volume occupied over the last decade or so, boosted in growth rates by nutrients from land based fertilizers running of farmland during rainfalls, going into rivers, and then eventually entering the ocean. Since the warm fresh water carrying the nutrients is quite buoyant and takes time to mix with seawater, these nutrients are available at the surface to cause plankton blooms including those of Sargassum algae. Surface algae growth is also helped along by very warm, more stratified ocean waters made that way by climate change.
In 2018 there was record Sargassum growth, it is quite routine now to measure the extent of these belts of algae with satellite spectrometry sensors. Every year since then has seen significant algae coverage of the ocean, and eventually most of this algae ends up on a beach somewhere in the Caribbean or Florida, where it is carried by the prevailing ocean currents.
When the seaweed chokes a coastline, it can cover entire near shore regions with a meter (3.3 feet) of dense algae that blocks sunlight to the ocean floor, harming reefs, fish, turtles, etc. on otherwise prolific coastal areas. Also, the Sargassum can cause other algae to proliferate, such as the algae that causes so-called red tides. Hauling the Sargassum off beaches is very expensive, and if left there it rots and can generate toxic hydrogen sulphide that can harm coastal wildlife, marine creatures, and even people.
I show you how to access the tools to track both red tides and seaweed paths to beaches, etc. so you can try to avoid the weeds, so to speak.
Maybe it would be better to try to sink the weeds in deep ocean, so at least the carbon within the macro-algae could become sequestered into the ocean sediments?
Please donate to http://PaulBeckwith.net to support my research and videos as I connect the dots on abrupt climate system change.
