New research explores how the Sargassum might grow while it is meandering along the currents, not just where it floats, combining both ocean physics and seaweed biology for the first time to understand its distribution patterns.
The word Sargassum conjures up images of a vast floating island off the coast of Bermuda, the mystical Sargasso Sea that has fascinated and inspired sailors’ tales for hundreds of years.
Sargassum is actually a floating seaweed that drifts on ocean currents in the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean, and Gulf of Mexico. It is unusual because it’s the only seaweed in the world that never spends any part of its life cycle attached to the bottom. Sometimes called a golden floating rainforest, clumps of Sargassum—ranging in size from a softball to floating rafts miles long—are their own ecosystem.
“These Sargassum rafts provide key habitat and structure in the open ocean—fish, little crabs, and juvenile sea turtles spend a bunch of time in and around them,” said University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science Horn Point Laboratory graduate student Maureen Brooks, who studies the movement of Sargassum in the ocean.
Continue reading at University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science
Image via University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science
