A giant blob of seaweed, spanning 5,000 miles and weighing an estimated 6.1 million tons, threatens to blanket Florida beaches and Caribbean islands with smelly piles of decaying brown goop.
Sargassum — the scientific name for the brown seaweed often found strewn across South Florida beaches — could start piling up in the Florida Keys in the next few days. Scientists expect Miami Beach to become a hot spot later in the sargassum season, which runs from March through October.
The rotten egg odor of decaying seaweed, caused by the release of hydrogen sulfide, can create health issues for residents who have chronic respiratory problems. Heavy seaweed deposits can also smother the young turtles that typically hatch on the beaches between August and October. Miami-Dade County has identified four seaweed hot spots on local beaches: beaches in Haulover just north of Haulover Cut; beaches in Bal Harbour just south of Haulover Cut; Miami Beach between 26th Street and 31st Street; and the beaches alongside South Pointe jetty.
But Hu said scientists believe climate change is contributing to the problem. Heavier-than-usual rainfall flushes more runoff from farms and cities into the ocean and pulls more Saharan dust out of the atmosphere and into the sea. Stronger storms stir up more nutrients from the bottom of the sea. Now, 5,000-mile seaweed blobs are the norm. This year’s blob is the second-biggest on record for February, according to the March outlook report from Hu and his FAU colleagues. But the blob actually shrank by a third from January to February, in a time period when seaweed blobs usually grow, offering “a glimmer of hope that the overall 2023 bloom may not be as large as previously feared,” the scientists wrote in their report.
Getting there takes some doing, but what awaits tenacious travelers is worth the effort, according to its new Tripadvisor ranking. Baía do Sancho is the world's best stretch of shoreline for 2023, according to the travel site's annual list of the world's best beaches, which was released on Tuesday.The beaches list is part of Tripadvisor's Travelers' Choice Awards, which are determined based on millions of reviews submitted by travelers over the course of 2022.
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Time to Lie on the Beach and RotHappy sargassum season! From now until October, beachgoers in parts of Florida and the Caribbean can expect to clamber over massive piles of putrefied seaweed in order to access the ocean, and they can marinate in its hideous stench while they sunbathe
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Giant, stinky brown seaweed mass threatens to choke beaches in Florida, Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean through summerThe floating mass of seaweed called sargassum could blanket coastal areas with piles of decaying brown goop, emitting toxic fumes as it rots. Sargassum is naturally abundant in the Sargasso Sea and has long been seen floating in mats across the North Atlantic.
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Giant seaweed blob heading towards FloridaThe massive, 5,000-mile mat of sargassum seaweed is thought to have grown to over twice as wide as the continental U.S. due to fertilizer run-off via rivers.
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