Should you be worried about seaweed ruining your vacation?

10.04.2024 - 23:41 / thepointsguy.com

"Massive seaweed blob invades Florida beaches."

"Huge, smelly snake of seaweed headed toward the Caribbean."

Though the headlines sound like something from a 1950s horror movie, sargassum — a type of seaweed — is a naturally occurring plant that, under normal circumstances, shouldn't be a major cause of concern for beachgoers.

Does this year's sargassum have the potential to sour your seaside vacation in the coming months? TPG spoke with oceanography experts to find out.

Sargassum is a large, brown seaweed — the common name for various species of marine plants and algae — that floats along the ocean's surface.

In healthy amounts, sargassum is a critical habitat for sea creatures. Animals like small fish, crabs, mollusks and even young sea turtles hang out around patches of sargassum for shelter and because the smaller residents provide a food resource for the larger ones.

Sargassum is neither destructive nor harmful under normal circumstances, even when left unattended on beaches. When it accumulates in massive amounts, however, it can have a negative impact on the ecosystem and local economies.

Technically referred to as the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt, the annual sargassum bloom isn't actually one continuous blob. Some patches can be miles long and tens of meters wide, while others can be more scattered and dispersed; together, they cover an area "several hundred miles wide across the Atlantic," according to Sea Education Association professor of oceanography Jeffrey M. Schell.

If you recall, 2023 saw a record sargassum bloom measuring close to 200% larger than what was present in 2022. The larger bloom resulted in record levels of sargassum washing up on beaches in the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico. When conditions were at their worst, affected beaches could have meter-high sargassum piles covering the entire beach.

When sargassum is as thick and plentiful as last year, it can cause major trouble both at sea and on the beach.

"Large amounts of sinking sargassum can smother corals and seagrasses, while rotten sargassum smells bad and may cause respiratory problems to humans," Yuyuan Xie — an oceanographer in the Optical Oceanography Laboratory at the University of South Florida whose laboratory works with the satellite-based Sargassum Watch System — told TPG.

"On beaches, large amounts of rotten seaweed are harmful to animals and humans because they attract insects, harbor bacteria and smell quite bad as it decomposes," Xie said.

Based on satellite imagery from a quarterly bulletin provided by The Centre for Resource Management and Environmental Studies at The University of the West Indies, Barbados, there is about 40% less sargassum visible in the Atlantic Ocean than there was at this time