The "Attack of the Sargassum Seaweed" Story

It was an ordinary day. Taking photos of a huge mass of yellow-orange seaweed off the coast of Barbados. Must be 300 feet long and 50 feet wide. Quite impressive, and it was moving at a very slow, steady pace from left to right in front of me towards the beach. Kind of looks like a blanket resembling sewage or an oil spill. Coming in with the tide. Never saw anything like it. A few months ago I read about the same problem happening in St. Martin, primarily on the beaches on the French side of the island because it is coming from the Sargasso Sea, an area in the Atlantic Ocean which stretches from the West Indies to the Azores. The sea is about two million square miles in size and ellipse in shaped. Ocean Temperatures and currents in this sea bring the seaweed to the surface and wash it south. The seaweed is of the genusSargassum, which floats enmass on the surface there. Read on TravelTalkOnline (TTOL) that the seaweed was leaving large deposits on the beaches, some as high as three feet in height. The rotting seaweed can give off hydrogen sulfide that is organic. It can give off a lethal gas, but the amount needed is far more than what has been arriving on the St. Martin shores. In the water, the seaweed is harmless, but once it lands on the beaches it starts to decompose. Some of the beaches were closed because of the seaweed. They were sending out warnings not to swim in waters carrying the seaweed, because you could possible get tangled in it and drown. The invasion of the seaweed that is extraordinary in volume has been hitting the eastern Caribbean since this past June from as far north as Anguilla to Tobago in the south. It seems that every year there is a natural drift of the seaweed, but scientists have been baffled this year by the sheer amount of seaweed. In Antigua a ritzy resort, The St. James Club, was forced to close for a month while it removed 10,000 TONS of seaweed from its beaches. And now its hitting the beaches of Barbados. With all the talk about the negative influence of the seaweed, there are positive factors. It provides a source of nutrients for the ecosystem as well as helps the fish who feed off of its organisms and the decomposing seaweed also releases nutrients for shoreline organisms. Just doesn't smell and look good along the shoreline. I took photos of the seaweed every 10 to 15 minutes as it worked its way to the beach. I walked the beach to my right with the camera trained on it. WHAT A SIGHT! Never witnessed anything like it. Then it finally reached shore. Really drew a crowd, all snapping photos for their albums. Eventually it was all on the shoreline about 100 yards to our right. Was going to take a long time to rake and gather it before anyone could swim on that stretch of Dover Beach. Wow, what a way to ruin a vacation. Lucky for us is our last day for the beach. I feel sorry for those just arriving on the island hoping to bask in the sun and swim in a seaweed free Caribbean Sea. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy. PS - photos show the mass of seaweed as it comes ashore on Dover Beach.

Photo of my wife in front of the start of the large mass of seaweed.

The start of the seaweed cover arriving from the south.

Panorama showing the mass heading toward the beach.

Cover of seaweed that is very impressive.

Arriving on Dover Beach