Tourism season in Florida,
Mexico and the Caribbean
is facing a huge threat.
A gigantic blob of smelly seaweed
floating in the Atlantic,
and it's washing up on beaches
in the region.
Leila Santiago shows us
how the Florida shores
are already being impacted.
It's thick
in the summertime,
builds up and smells terrible.
Joe Kaplan captured
these images about a week ago.
Massive amounts of seaweed
washing up at Smathers
Beach, a beach he knows
well because he walks it
several times a week.
I was shocked
when I saw it that day
where it wasn't even spring yet.
It's still winter, which is very unusual.
And this is about a 5000 miles long.
Professor Schulman,
who is one of the leading experts
on what many have referred to
as a massive blob of seaweed
heading to Florida's coast.
Fair to call it a blob?
No, no, we can't call it a blob.
I would never call that a blob.
Okay. Why?
Because he's not.
Satellite images,
he says show
it's not one massive body of seaweed.
Rather, a bunch of patchy clumps
traveling from West Africa.
It's called
the Atlantic Sargassum Belt
and is considered a natural phenomenon.
Right now, it's twice
the width of the U.S.
carrying 6 million tons of seaweed
and headed to the East Coast in June
of this year.
It may turn into $20 million.
So let me get this straight.
This what we're seeing the last month
is 6 million tons.
And it's going to get bigger. Yes.
There's no way to stop that.
This is a nightmare.
It's just like
no one can stop a hurricane.
Should we be worried about that? Nope.
The reason
is the Sarkozys are not toxic,
but it smells pretty bad.
And it's a nuisance
for those trying to keep beaches
clean to attract tourists.
Just a few years ago,
here's what it looked like in Mexico.
Officials in Monroe County,
which includes
the Florida Keys, have set aside
more than $200,000
to clean and remove Sargassum
from its beaches.
Seaweed is a mixed blessing.
We need it.
Seaweed is a nursery
for all these large pelagic fish.
The negative side to that seaweed is
if it comes in the concentrations
that I believe we're going to see,
our fishing grounds
are going to be
completely covered with it.
There's almost no point to fishing
because we're going to be
spending the entire day
cleaning weed off our lines.
And as the Sargassum belt heads
toward Florida,
another natural phenomenon
is already hitting
its beaches on the West Coast.
Red tide
that can be toxic, kill fish
and cause respiratory issues.
This year's red tide
concerns were enough to cancel
at least one
major event here in Indian rocks,
where one family visiting
told us
as soon as my son,
my husband and I got out of our car,
we all started coughing.
Look for spring breakers
like this group from Iowa.
The concerns
of massive amounts of seaweed or red tide
were not enough to change vacation plans.
I would rather it be red tide
than raining every day.
Brian Lapointe is a research professor
at Florida Atlantic
University's Harbor Branch
Oceanographic Institute.
And he joins me now
from Fort Pierce in Florida.
Appreciate you being with us.
Well, thank you for the invite.
So a massive blob of seaweed
spanning 5000 miles
is heading straight for the Florida
Gulf Coast.
So vast, in fact,
that it can be seen from space.
When do you expect it to hit the coast
and what might this signal?
The critical spring break
and of course, the summer months ahead
Well, this
the so-called blob of seaweed
is this seaweed
floating sargassum
in the tropical Atlantic Ocean.
And that is what we call
the great Atlantic Sargassum belt.
And that that Sargassum
seaweed is moving towards the west
and will proceed
to move through the Caribbean
and up into the Gulf of Mexico
in South Florida area
in the coming months.
And we typically get the peak of
that seaweed arriving in Florida
around mid-summer.
July is usually when it peaks.
Yeah, I think I've been there
when it's arrived.
So so why we seeing such a massive blob
of seaweed at this time?
What's causing it?
And how big a threat
as opposed to residents and to sea life
Well, this is an unusual year
in that this Sargassum Bloom
in the great Atlantic Sargassum Belt
started early.
It doubled in size
between December and January
in one month and doubled in size
and was larger in January
than it has ever
been since this new region of Sargassum
growth began in 2011.
So this is
an entirely new oceanographic phenomenon.
Previously, the Sargasso was
in the Sargasso Sea to the north,
that is the central gyre of the North
Atlantic Ocean
and was circulate
in the currents around that
as well as through the Caribbean
and the Gulf of Mexico.
So this is a whole new thing
and this is the source of this
Sargassum seaweed
that is is creating such a problem,
really a catastrophic problem
for for tourism
in the Caribbean region
where it piles up on beaches up to five
or six feet deep on the beaches
in some places.
In fact,
in Barbados just last week, they reported
they need 1600 dump trucks a day
to clean the beaches of this seaweed
to make it suitable for poor tourists.
And recreation on the beaches.
And you know where it comes
ashore in the mangroves.
It it comes in such large quantities
that it basically sucks the oxygen
out of the water
and creates
what we refer to as dead zones.
These are normally
a nursery habitats for fisheries.
And once once they're devoid of oxygen,
we have lost that habitat
They are also harmful to seagrasses
and coral reefs
and obviously to human health as well,
because when they rot
they release toxic hydrogen sulfide gas.
They have a high concentration of arsenic
in the tissue.
So you have to be very careful
when you clean the beaches
and try to reuse this
for fertilizers
or some other beneficial use.
So what solutions are available
to stop these massive seaweed invasions?
Is there anything that can be done
to disperse
or break it up,
or do we just need to do
what you've suggested
basically taking away
truckloads of this seaweed
Well,
at this point, that's all we can do.
Efforts are being made in the Caribbean
to construct booms,
to hold it off the beach
and to get harvesting boats
to run along those booms
and harvest it into barges
where then it could be taken either
to land to a suitable disposal site
and dried
and perhaps used for some purpose or
a new project is looking at actually
harvesting it
at sea
and sinking it
to the bottom of the ocean.
And in that way, sequestering carbon
that is, you know,
used by photosynthesis in the seaweed,
sending it to the bottom of the sea
where it will be buried.
And in that way, sequester that carbon
to kind of chip away
at the CO2 build up in the atmosphere.
Bryan Lapointe,
thank you so much for joining us.
Appreciate it. You're welcome. Thank you.