USF's sargassum report is nasty. It seems massive fires in Africa dropped a lot of smoke particles with nutrients in the ocean, feeding an enormous seaweed bloom. Marine-USF-Sargassum

Time to practice your fling.

Edited: 02/18/2023 at 11:47 AM by ww

Sebastian Inlet was unfishable all summer due to the massive amount of weeds.

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I was right.

uh oh, even made it to Yahoo news GIANT BLOB OF SEAWEED TWICE THE WIDTH OF US TAKING AIM AT FLORIDA, SCIENTISTS SAY

That story was originated by AP, made it to NBC and the Fox station in Orlando.

I did not know that Governor DeSantis surfed !!!!!

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Dora Hates You

It is on our doorstep as I type this. 5,000 miles worth, if local Fox news is correct.

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I was right.

Edited: 03/15/2023 at 08:13 AM by Cole

Same guy a bit before the fling. The non-breaking waves were probably as big a frustration as the seaweed.

So, Okay, how do we make money off of collecting this crap up off the beach?

Way-back-when we occasionally had these kinds of onslaughts but/and, , , , , the weed was LOADED with "tar" (bunker fuel) leaking from all of the sunken WWII ships off the coast.

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Dora Hates You

One summer not too long ago we had a bad tar outbreak and a buddy of mine found an oil spill tracking buoy just off the Canaveral Pier. Coincidence? lol

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I was right.

"Massive Sargassum" would be a great name for a ska band...

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add a signature since I'm here in profile anyway

How about "Multiple Sorgasm" for a low-budget surf-porn flick?

Edited: 03/16/2023 at 04:24 PM by CurtisEflush

Mine will be called Massive Ska-gazm thanks, tom

I can think of few things worse than rolling around in sand and seaweed. Yeck!

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I was right.

RESEARCH PROFESSOR DR. BRIAN LAPOINTE says THERE IS NO NEED TO BE ALARMED BECAUSE THE BLOOM DEPENDS ON THE CURRENTS AND WINDS

Florida International University's beach professor (he convened the first-ever international symposium on rip currents a decade ago and has his annual list of great beaches). Update from earlier. https://theconversation.com/th...rida-and-the-caribbean

Edited: 04/08/2023 at 08:23 PM by ww

May 2 story from South Florida Sun-Sentinel via Orlando Sentinel:

Brian Lapointe, of Florida Atlantic University, who worked on the paper, said 2018 produced the largest belt, a 5,500-mile-long swath of the stuff that stretched from the coast of West Africa to the Caribbean Sea. This year's bloom is not quite as large.

The sargassum zone also has shifted from the Sargasso Sea, a massive area of the Atlantic off the U.S. southern seaboard, south to tropical waters, which may help explain the growth.

"What's bizarre about this story is that we never historically had sargassum growing in that area until 2011. The Sargasso Sea is to the north of that, so we have a new center of distribution of sargassum. ... Once it got there, it liked it - there were nutrients to support its growth."

POOF, its gone

Yeah, but Saharan dust is over the Sargassum breeding ground east of the Antilles. We should see some dust over central Fla. Sunday-Monday.

BTW, the world's greatest phosphate deposit, dwarfing Florida, is in Morocco.

Edited: 07/07/2023 at 08:14 PM by ww