There is a wave of sargassum coming from the Caribbean, and it is already breaking records this summer. It means coastal areas on the East Coast and the Keys will see more algae than usual.
West Florida residents and visitors, on the other hand, will not see the algae this summer.
USF professor Brian Barnes works at the school's Optical Oceanography Laboratory. He said the general trajectory of the sargassum belt keeps it from impacting the west coast of Florida.
Barnes said that is because there's not a lot of movement from the interior of the Gulf to the western coast of Florida.
“On the west coast of Florida, we are not likely to see any impacts from this larger sargassum belt,” he said. “Just the way that the sargassum is at the surface, and so it's responding to the winds and the surface currents.”
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Barnes said a record 38 million metric tons of algae were observed through satellites in May — but levels could increase even more in June. The previous record of 22 million metric tons was set in June 2022.
Although the number may sound huge — and it is — Barnes said each individual patch of sargassum may only cover a small area.
This means a particular beach could see a significant amount of sargassum, while an adjacent beach would not.
Sargassum is not a plant, but a macroalgae. Still, it is seasonal, meaning it goes through some changes over the course of its life cycle.
The sargassum bloom increases in June, but those peaks have been getting steadily larger over the years.
The first time USF’s Optical Oceanography Laboratory tracked this bloom was in 2011, so Barnes explained this is a relatively new phenomenon that seems to be getting bigger.
However, Barnes said, the lab was still not able to find a reason for this phenomenon.
“It's a really tough question to get a wrap on,” he said. “We don't know exactly what confluence of events is causing this specific bloom to be so much larger than anything we've ever seen in the area.”
But to find an answer, Barnes said the team is “actively looking” at the environmental conditions and how they differ from other years.
Sargassum responds to the environment it's in, meaning it will proliferate when there are the right conditions for growth — such as temperature, nutrients and light.
While at the surface of the water offshore, the algae create a “hotbed of life.”
“It can be home to a series of marine animals, such as endangered species of sea turtles,” Barnes said.
While the sargassum habitat is nice and healthy offshore, some problems appear when it comes ashore. Those can range from inundations to influxes of biomass into coastal ecosystems.
Barnes said when the algae comes ashore they start decaying and release gases that “stink.”
“It also releases nutrients and organic matter into the water, which has follow-on effects on both plant and animal life in the marine ecosystems,” he said.
But there are some ways to prevent algae from piling up on beaches.
Residents or businesses with “particularly sensitive shorelines” can install barriers in the water to prevent sargassum from coming ashore, Barnes said.
However, the general approach is usually to clean beaches when the algae is ashore.
Barnes said people should do so as quickly as possible before the sargassum can have long-term impacts on the ecosystem.
It’s not an easy job. It requires a lot of manual labor or heavy machinery to collect the sargassum. Most is picked up by tractors and dump trucks.
With sargassum peaking this month, the amount will decrease between July and August.
