A giant seaweed bloom, visible from space, is heading toward Florida’s Gulf Coast and threatening to make it into a stinky, brown mess.
The 5,000-mile-wide sargassum bloom — believed to be the largest in history at twice the width of the continental US — is drifting ominously toward the Sunshine State, NBC News reported.“It’s incredible,” Brian LaPointe, a research professor at Florida Atlantic University’s Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute, told the news outlet.“What we’re seeing in the satellite imagery does not bode well for a clean beach year,” he added.
While the seaweed is harmless, tourism was impacted the last time the coast was slammed with a big bloom in 2019.
The size of this sargassum would make it one of the largest on record. Even though that sounds intimidating, in open waters, sargassums are mostly harmless and even come with benefits.“Animals would feed on it. There’s a whole host of fish and etc, that live in the Sargasso Sea,” [” Barry Rosen, a professor in The Water School at Florida Gulf Coast University] said.And these blobs are known to produce oxygen, which can have consequences when it nears the shore.“It can pile up on a beach and be pretty massive. And that happens on our east coast a lot over Miami Dade all the way North. On our coast, it doesn’t happen too often,” Rosen said.2019 was a particularly bad year for sargassum on the East coast of Florida. It was stifling some of the tourism and racking up clean-up costs.
It turns out that the smell of decaying plants is unpleasant and can cause respiratory problems.
Brian Barnes, an assistant research professor at the University of South Florida’s College of Marine Science told NBC News that the seaweed can entangle boat propellers and block intake valves. When the seaweed gathered on beaches or in the shallows begins to rot, it releases noxious gasses like hydrogen sulfide, which can cause respiratory problems.Over 11,000 Acute Sargassum Toxicity cases were reported in an 8-month span in Guadalupe and Martinique in the wake of the 2018 sargassum bloom.
This development is in addition to the red tide problem the Sunshine State is also facing.
Sarasota and Pinellas counties have been hit hardest, the Tampa Bay Times reported.People should not swim through or near red tide waters, which can cause skin irritations, rashes, burning and sore eyes, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.Those with asthma or lung disease shouldn’t even go onto the beach.The bloom has already affected future events.The organizers of the annual BeachFest in Indian Rocks Beach, Fla., announced they were canceling the festival even though it’s more than a month away.“Red Tide is currently present on the beach and is forecasted to remain in the area in the weeks to come,” the Indian Rocks Beach Homeowners Association, which sponsors the event, said in a public letter. “It is unfortunate that [the festival] had to be canceled but it is the best decision in the interest of public health.”
Of course, the blame for this bloom will be placed on the usual suspects.
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