Scientists have some good news for people who live in eastern Florida or plan to travel there this summer.
Last April, researchers spotted a record-setting 3 million tons of sargassum — a free-floating, smelly seaweed — in the Caribbean Sea. When the mass began washing ashore in Key West and other places in Florida last May, locals and visitors alike feared the smelly seaweed would be a constant fixture at beaches all summer.
At the time, scientists from the University of South Florida’s Optical Oceanography Lab, which studies the sargassum, predicted the seaweed blob would soon shrink. Indeed, the mass has now shrunk by an astounding 75 percent. The reduction was “beyond expectation,” according to the latest bulletin from the Optical Oceanography Lab.
“One month ago, we predicted this,” said Chuanmin Hu, a professor of optical oceanography at the University of South Florida, according to the Miami Herald. “We said, ‘In June, it’s likely going to drop.’ But we never expected it would drop this much.”
Hu and his colleagues have even more good news: The sargassum season for Florida is very likely over for this year.
“That doesn’t mean Florida is sargassum-free; it simply means that the amount is not alarming,” Hu said. “If you go to the beach in the next month or so, you may still see some sargassum here and there, but it’s a small amount. It doesn’t hurt anything.”
Why The Sargassum Dissipated
The sargassum that has been washing ashore in Florida and on Caribbean beaches is part of what’s called the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt, which stretches 5,000 miles from the west coast of Africa to the Gulf of Mexico.
Scientists at the USF Optical Oceanography Lab can’t say for sure why the sargassum in the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico has already dissipated so much this year. One hypothesis, though, is that cyclones played a role.
“The winds were stronger than usual” in the Gulf and Caribbean in June, Hu said, the Miami Herald continues. “Those winds may dissipate sargassum or even make them sink.”
It should be noted that there are still millions of tons of sargassum in the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt. While some of it will continue washing ashore in the eastern Caribbean, Florida’s beaches will be mostly clear, explained Hu.
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