Sargassum

A Florida team has turned a common cause of frustration for many beach-goers into a new food opportunity, after discovering that a common processed food ingredient can be extracted from the sargassum seaweed that at times plagues our beaches.

Massive piles of sargassum, the size of which have not been seen before, are floating this way, right now, sure to coat the beaches of Florida's East Coast, the Keys, and various Caribbean islands.

You may know sargassum as the stinky algae that periodically washes ashore, but it’s been an important breeding habitat for many marine species in the Atlantic.

If you've been on the coasts of Florida in the last couple of weeks, you've probably seen bunches of brown seaweed washing up on the shore.

Each individual patch of sargassum may only cover a small area. This means a particular beach could see a significant amount of algae, while an adjacent beach would not.

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Millions of tons of yellow-brown algae that have been swirling about in a region of the tropical Atlantic known as the Sargasso Sea are now breaking loose and landing on Florida shores

Researchers from the University of South Florida found last year’s sargassum bloom was so big it posed challenges on a hemispheric scale for marine ecosystems and coastal towns. The size of this upcoming summer’s fledgling bloom is setting records.

Potential pilot projects could explore converting sargassum into building material, types of “green” fuel and even an additive that could help reduce beach erosion.

A massive sargassum bloom inundated coastlines in Florida and the Caribbean earlier this year. Now, the University of South Florida is leading a $3.2 million grant to bridge a gap in tracking the algae from the open ocean to land.

USF researchers who monitor the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt say they were shocked to see just how much the levels fell last month in the Gulf and Caribbean.

Despite the good news, there has still been a profound increase in sargassum in the Atlantic, and thus Florida’s beaches, compared to the early years of the USF study.