However, excessive amounts of Sargassum in nearshore environments can cause environmental and economic problems (Imageset 4). Sargassum seaweed around the Caribbean, along the ocean side of Florida Keys and east coast of Florida are inevitable. Massive seaweed belt still on track to hit US: When will it arrive? There are currently projects being implemented or planned to sink Sargassum (and thereby atmospheric carbon) to the ocean floor as part of the Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) effort. Sargassum maps showing in a typical year before (top) and after (bottom) 2011, which marks the first year of the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt. No, Florida is not getting smothered by a giant seaweed blob - News4JAX Sargassum beaching events have also been reported in western Africa and northern Brazil. In the presence of these plants, the water appears red, and the toxins produced by the microscopic algae can kill fish and make shellfish dangerous to eat. These observations are publicly available at the AOML CoastWatch OceanViewer web page. For a measurable impact on Florida beaches, University of South Florida research professor Brian Barnes said that a concentrated amount of about "the size of a football field of seaweed must land on a seashore at once. Sargassum Tracker - CARICOOS The raw satellite data are provided by the U.S. NASA and USGS. Both nutrient pollution and climate change are thought to boost the severity of the sargassums seasonal proliferation. All Rights Reserved. A discount sign is displayed at a shop in Miami Beach, Fla., on January 12, 2022. (2016). Let us know via science@newsweek.com. A loose raft of brown seaweed spanning about twice the width of the U.S. is inching across the Caribbean. Warmer waters, changes in marine overturn, and increasing rainstorms causing runoff from the Amazon basinall influenced by climate changeare also thought to be factors. landings: an evaluation of leachate released from natural decomposition at Mexican Caribbean coast. NOAA publishes a regularly updated sargassum report online that estimates the risk of beach inundations around the Gulf of Mexico. In the ocean, Sargassum appears in different forms, from small clumps, surface mats, to large rafts and windrows that can be several kilometers long and hundreds of meters wide (Imageset 2). Sargassum decomposition on beaches smells bad, attracts insects, and causes many environmental problems (e.g., smothering turtle nesting sites, sea turtle mortality, fish kills) and economic problems (e.g., diminished tourism). When this is clicked, a KML file is generated for that image. Scientists at the University of South Florida, with the help of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, have been tracking the bloom of sargassum, a type of brown seaweed, using satellites. Deposition of the Saharan dust and smoke ashes can bring micronutrients such as iron to the surface ocean. . Monit. Supreme Court LGBTQ 'Fake Case' Could be ReversedLawyer, Trump-Appointed Prosecutor Pushes Back on Republicans' Hunter Biden Claims, Josh Hawley's Wife Faces Calls to Be Sanctioned Over Supreme Court Case, Wagner Group Fires One of Its Five Leadersa Former Russian Army Colonel. Planning to spend some time at the beach but want to check out the latest conditions? The bulletins started in early February 2018, and they are meant to give an outlook of Sargassum bloom probability in certain regions in the upcoming months, based on bloom conditions in previous months, and previous years. Feagin, R. A. and A. M. Williams (2010). The volume of seaweed in the central west Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico continues to increase. Ocean Dynamics, 72:383-404. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10236-022-01511-1, Smetacek, V., and A. Zingone (2013). Sargassum, a specific variety of seaweed, has long formed large blooms in the Atlantic Ocean, and scientists have been tracking massive accumulations since 2011. PeerJ 8:e8667. Sargassum in the ocean serves as an important habitat for many marine animals including fish, shrimp, crabs, and turtles. Moreover, it starts to rot after 48 hours on land, releasing gases such as hydrogen sulfide, which can irritate your respiratory tracks and cause issues like asthma. Seaweed off Florida:Giant mats of seaweed lurk off Florida's coast and have beached in spurts but will peak soon. The discontinuous blob currently comprises an estimated 13 million tons of algae and spans about 5,000 miles of ocean from east to west, according to the University of South Florida's Optical Oceanography Lab, which has been tracking these sargassum blooms for over a decade. Mats of Sargassum are nothing new. Lett. In nutrient-poor waters Sargassum tends to have yellowish colors, and large rafts moving with currents and winds are often called golden tides. In nutrient-rich waters their colors often turn brownish, thus the name brown tides.. And the Atlantic has been reliably producing much more Sargassum in recent decades than it has historically. The paper presents the results of an analysis carried out with the SIRs; the fields presented in these reports show promise as a platform that can incorporate new data sources and integrate them with forecast models as they develop. (2017). WJXT Meteorologist Mark Collins holds sargassum seaweed that washed up in Ft. Lauderdale back in 2019. Hardy, and E. J. Hochberg (2015), Spectral and spatial requirements of remote measurements of pelagic Sargassum macroalgae, Remote Sens. Those Seaweed Blobs Headed for Florida? See How Big They Are. Popular tourist beaches rake the seaweed each morning and remove it from beaches, but with the state's 1,350 miles of shoreline, that's not always possible. Lapointe says that the high Sargassum levels of recent years are likely in part tied to nutrient-rich water running off land into rivers and out to the oceans, where it can fertilize the seaweed. Monitoring Sargassum distribution and abundance in the ocean in a timely fashion is of great importance for studying ocean ecology, helping fishery management, and forecasting Sargassum beaching events. Large river plumes such as those from the Amazon and Congo can also carry a large amount of nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorous) to coastal oceans. People remove Sargassum in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, in April, 2022. Red Nose Day: Is Jordan North doing any challenge for Comic Relief 2023. The seaweed originated from the tropical Atlantic, and is believed to be a result of climate variability and other natural and unnatural processes. Sargassum. A 5,000-mile-wide blob of seaweed that is slowly creeping toward the Florida coast has been recorded from space by NASA. Researchers have expected this year might turn out to be heavy in seaweed, however, because even the winter lull saw higher amounts of the stuff than average. The beaches along the Texas coast have experienced Sargassum inundation events annually, and since 2001 beaching events have also occurred on many Caribbean shores in nearly every spring and summer. Toxicol. Smathers Beach, Key West, Florida, March 5, 2023 (top, photo credit: Brian Lapointe), July 20, 2021 (middle left, the brownish water is due to Sargassum leachate, photo credit: Rachel Brewton). Any type of bloom of any relative size is unheard of before 2011, Barnes said. Sargassum can live in both nutrient-poor and nutrient-rich waters but prefer warm (temperature range of 18 30C) and salty (salinity > 24) waters. Tracking Sargassum Rafts. Giant mats of seaweed lurk off Florida's coast and have beached in spurts but will peak soon, Florida beach live webcams show surf, waves, sargassum seaweed conditions, Your California Privacy Rights / Privacy Policy, Jacksonville to Vatican City, Italy: 5,045 miles, Pensacola to Melbourne, Australia: 9,441 miles. Beach goers can simply choose to avoid large quantities of accumulated Sargassum. This means that, depending on the time of the year, large quantities of Sargassum can be found in most waters of the Sargasso Sea, Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean Sea, tropical Atlantic, and around the peripheries of the GASB, such as coastal waters off west Africa and Brazilian coast. Sargassum Now World's Largest Harmful Algal Bloom Due to Nitrogen The world is changing, and part of that is the oceans are getting warmer, and algae seems to be able to grow over a longer period of the calendar now then used to be the case, Tomasco said. Sargassum mass this year is estimated to stretch beyond 5000 miles and weigh over 10 million tons. (2022). Tomasco also pointed to the increased use of fertilizing in Florida agriculture and landscaping, which runs off into the gulf and helps spur the seaweed's growth. 194, 120. In July 2022, the U.S. Virgin Island and FEMA declared a state of emergency due to Sargassum clogging of two water intakes of a desalination plant. Geosci. Based on satellite observations and statistics of historical events, in early February 2018 the Optical Oceanography Lab developed the first 1-page Sargassum outlook bulletin for the Caribbean Sea. The Seaweed Blob Is Heading to a Beach Near You | WIRED Because of this, the U.S. NOAA prohibits harvesting of Sargassum in U.S. waters without authorization. This satellite image, taken on March 11, shows blobs and strands of sargassum, some 12 miles long, in the Atlantic Ocean. Which beaches will be impacted the most and when? While the exact cause for extreme blooms isnt fully determined, experts believe humans alteration of the nitrogen cycle has a role to play in it. Stranded and decomposing on beaches, it releases rotten egg-smelling hydrogen sulfide gas. In the tropical Atlantic, all these conditions are met in favor of Sargassum growth. There are also higher-resolution satellites that provide zoomed in views for particular locations, but these satellites typically cover smaller areas (particularly around the coasts) and do not provide daily coverage. Additionally, climate change may result in altered ocean currents because of changes in air and water temperatures, which will affect the movement of the sargassum as well as its access to nutrients. Environ., 183:356-367. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2016.04.019, Wang, M., and C. Hu (2017), Predicting Sargassum blooms in the Caribbean Sea from MODIS observations, Geophys. Sargassum is a brown macroalgae (seaweed), with hundreds of different species found in different tropical and temperate ocean environments. 2023 Scientific American, a Division of Springer Nature America, Inc. Ecosystem Science & Management, Texas A&M University, pp23. From the large-scale distributions and from the changes of timings in peak months, it appears that two regions may provide seed populations in their respective seasonal cycles: one in the western Gulf of Mexico, and the other in the tropical Atlantic and Sargasso Sea. This can pose large problems for beaches and coastal communities, especially during the tourist season. If you've ever been on a beach that had a huge abundance of this, it's not fun, Dave Tomasco, executive director of the Sarasota Bay Estuary Program, told ABC News. Remote Sens., 44, 36193625. In 2019, a buildup of sargassum at Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park near Miami got it knocked off a ranking of America's best beaches. Science of the Total Environment, 781, 146801. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.146801, Huffard, C. L., S. von Thun, A. D. Sherman, K. Sealey, and K. L. Smith Jr. (2014). The seaweed blob has been dubbed the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt, and though its sprawling, the algae in the belt cover only about 0.1 percent of the waters surface, says Chuanmin Hu, an oceanographer at the University of South Florida, who has used satellites to study Sargassum for nearly 20 years. Since the 1970s, the Sea Education Association (SEA) conducted systematic surveys of Sargassum in the western Atlantic (including the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico) several times a year, during which Sargassum abundance was measured using a towed net. Assess. TAMPA, Fla. ( WFLA) Marine scientists are tracking a 5,000-mile-wide seaweed bloom that is so large, it can be seen from space. Remote Sens. Where can I get the most recent information on Sargassum locations? Sargassum can be indirectly observed by satellite from space by measuring how light reflects from the ocean surface. Res. Sea turtle nesting season is here! Meet the sargassum belt, a 5,000-mile-long snake of seaweed circling Florida. Bull. Seaweed in seen in the beaches of Miami Beach, Miami, March 10, 2023. This section allows for information to be shared between governmental agencies, private sector, academia, NGOs, and other social groups, through the disclosure of initiatives and research projects happening in each of the participating and/or affected countries. Of particular importance are the two customized data products, namely the floating algae index (FAI) to detect floating algae and other materials on the ocean surface, and the color index (CI) to trace ocean circulation features. Pelagic Sargassum community change over a 40-year period: temporal and spatial variability. Dive into the Sargassum Hub to discover more about the ongoing initiatives relating to the Sargassum phenomenon happening in coastal areas around the globe. NASA Satellites Find Biggest Seaweed Bloom in the World The total amount of seaweed is expected to increase over the next few months, with impacts worsening in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. Originating in the Atlantic Ocean, the bloom is approaching the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico, posing a threat to beaches across the Gulf, including tourism-centric Florida. The map suggests that the seaweed blob will increase in size as it passes through the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. Hu and his colleagues estimate the total mass ofSargassumin the Atlantic every month, tracking a yearly cycle that typically peaks in June. RELATED:Could Our Energy Come from Giant Seaweed Farms in the Ocean? Interested readers are encouraged to read the references at "Further Readings". Mar. These species grow as a mat of glops of algae that stay afloat via little air-filled sacs attached to leafy structures. Once the sargassum blob hits the beach, the seaweed can be removed. The powerful toxins released by the algae bloom can cause breathing issues and bouts of cough when you go closer to the water. 15:67-88. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11157-015-9381-7, Modestin, E., et al.

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