The largest seaweed bloom ever detected spanned the Atlantic in 2018
by Carolyn Gramling 16 Jul 2019 14:39 UTC
Floating Islands- Sargassum seaweed (shown off of Florida's Big Pine Key) can form vast mats in the ocean that shelter everything from turtles to eels to fish. But blooms of the algae are becoming more extensive, posing a problem for coastlines © Brian Lapointe
Satellite data revealed increasing amounts of Sargassum algae in the ocean since 2011.
During the summer, vast, floating islands of Sargassum algae can blanket entire parts of the tropical Atlantic Ocean. The algae reached their largest extent on record in June 2018, forming a giant brown belt that extended for 8,850 kilometers from the west coast of Africa into the Gulf of Mexico.
At least 20 million metric tons of Sargassum made up the belt, the largest bloom of seaweed ever detected, researchers say.
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