Seaweed levels in tropical Atlantic break all-time record in April: What to know

It s the season for seaweed and researchers say it s back with a vengeance the month of April broke records for the amount of sargassum in the tropical Atlantic and the Caribbean Sea According to the University of South Florida s Optical Oceanography Lab OOL which monitors the distribution of this brown macroalgae April s bloom was higher than the all-time high in June which makes a new record year So exactly how big is it It s huge Dr Chuanmin Hu professor of Oceanography at USF s College of Marine Science says Typically if it s just over a record it s not big but now we see higher than historical records and in terms of the total amount we have about million metric tons in the tropical Atlantic and the Caribbean sea Videos captured an inundation event at area beaches back in April But how much more can we expect and when And is this growing vegetation cause for concern Here s what you need to know A pile of sargassum or seaweed on Key Biscayne s coastline on Thursday April Ashley Miznazi The Miami Herald Tribune News Amenity via Getty Images Will South Florida beaches get inundated with sargassum this summer The Optical Oceanography Lab s April bulletin says that as in previous years the bloom is expected to grow in May in largest part regions of the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico But Hu cautions even if a portion of that large amount eventually reaches these straits of Florid and southeast coast of Florida whether or not that sargassum would be washed on the beach is still variable depending on local winds and tides For instance there s good news for beachgoers this weekend May - the winds aren t favorable for a sargassum inundation Still the bulletin reads that sargassum inundation will continue to occur in the majority of the Caribbean nations and islands as well as along the southeast coast of Florida When could South Florida see sargassum inundations in There isn t an exact way to predict when seaweed will hit the beach since there are so plenty of factors to its passage and improvement For now the majority of sargassum is really far away Hu says There s particular moderate amount in the western Caribbean sea but it will take a month or more for that sargassum to reach Florida Why is there more seaweed in the ocean Researchers know that sargassum will keep growing if it gets adequate sunlight and nutrients But a lot of what s causing these blooms remains a mystery and a current topic of research Our speculation is that this year the wind is stronger than usual and that will bring more deep water nutrients to the surface water to fuel this plant Hu noted The ocean itself is also warmer than usual so that means this plant is happier But scientists also can t yet predict exactly how much a bloom will grow The reason is that the ocean is really huge Hu noted If you want to send a boat to measure something remember you are just measuring a point It s really hard to generalize An infographic from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows how sargassum goes from hundreds of miles away in the open ocean to the coastline Does setting change have a role to play in the growing blooms of seaweed It has a big role Hu explained Let me put it in another way We call it state variability one of the consequences of environment change is we have a more extreme weather either too much precipitation or too dry too warm or two cold The warm water is favorable for the progress of sargassum Is sargassum good or bad for the circumstances In January Dr Dennis McGillicuddy the senior scientist in the Department of Applied Ocean Physics and Engineering at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Cape Cod Massachusetts spoke to NBC about his research on sargassum Despite playing what McGillicudy describes as an essential role in a balanced circumstances like plenty of other things too much of a good thing can be a bad thing and that s what we ve seen in the fresh blooms of sargassum Specifically if the bloom is too large it could block sunlight and have negative consequences for sea grasses and coral reefs Another direct consequence we see of this in the coastal ocean has to do with animals that use the coastal atmosphere for reproduction McGillicuddy says As you ostensibly know loggerhead turtles their preferred nesting setting are beaches And so we ve seen situations when the adults can t get ashore to lay their eggs and then those that are lucky enough to lay their eggs the hatchlings have difficulty getting back out into the ocean because of the seaweed barrier that s created by sargassum Its cleanup is also expensive The local governmental agencies already spend a lot of effort and money to clean the beaches Hu declared I heard from our collaborators they spent a half million or million of dollars a year to clean the beach It s not just the cleaning Once they remove sargassum where do they put it