Researchers at Florida Atlantic University’s Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute have released a landmark review tracing four decades of changes in pelagic sargassum – free-floating brown seaweed that plays a vital role in the Atlantic Ocean ecosystem.
Researchers at Florida Atlantic University’s Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute have released a landmark review tracing four decades of changes in pelagic sargassum – free-floating brown seaweed that plays a vital role in the Atlantic Ocean ecosystem.
Once thought to be primarily confined to the nutrient-poor waters of the Sargasso Sea, sargassum is now recognized as a rapidly growing and widely distributed marine organism, whose expansion across the Atlantic is closely linked to both natural processes and human-induced nutrient enrichment.
The review, published in the journal Harmful Algae, sheds new light on the origins and development of the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt, a massive recurring bloom of sargassum that stretches across the Atlantic Ocean from the coast of West Africa to the Gulf of America.
Since its first appearance in 2011, this belt has formed nearly every year – except in 2013 – and in May, reached a new record biomass of 37.5 million tons. This does not include the baseline biomass of 7.3 million tons historically estimated in the Sargasso Sea.
Read More: Florida Atlantic University
Image: Brian Lapointe, Ph.D., emerges from sargassum at Little Palm Island in June 2014. (Credit: Florida Atlantic University)
