Arrival of Sargassum on Florida's Central East Coast Beaches

We observed large patches of marine macro-algae (Sargassum sp.) floating just offshore, drifting north, and getting stranded on the beach.

Rose Scannell observed:

I was at a family retreat at a beach house at 3712 Anacostia Place on Hutchinson Island, Florida, when we observed large patches of marine macro-algae (Sargassum sp.) floating just offshore, drifting north, and getting stranded on the beach. We thought it seemed unusual, so we searched for and read some recent online news articles on the subject, and we reached out to the Florida Oceanographic Society at Stuart, Florida, located 24 km SSE of our beach house location.

Dr. Katie Tiling of the Florida Oceanographic Society wrote:

Thank you for reaching out. We do naturally have Sargassum wash up on our beaches; however, there is indeed an unusually large amount of it this summer. The causes of these bloom events have yet to be determined, but the amount washed up is driven by wind and tide conditions. These blooms have been increasing in occurrence since about 2011.

You may have come across some of these articles in your google search but here are two articles discussing the situation. Many refer to issue in the Caribbean islands which are getting the brunt of the impact.

• Langin, K. 2018. Mysterious masses of seaweed assault Caribbean islands. Science doi:10.1126/science.aau4441

• Breslin, S. 2018. Brown Seaweed Appears in Massive Amounts on Florida, Caribbean Beaches. The Weather Channel, June 27, 2018.

Resources

Sargassum on Wikipedia