Scientists are attempting to determine the explanations behind the phenomenon of seaweed buildup periodically blanketing Galveston seashores and different locales alongside the Texas coast, which has become a semi-annual occasion.
Peter Morton, an affiliate analysis scientist with the Texas A&M Division of Oceanography, stated sargassum — a selected kind of seaweed — has lengthy been native to the Atlantic Ocean, however has solely lately begun to develop exponentially.
“Sargassum has all the time grown within the Sargasso Sea. We’ve information going again to Christopher Columbus’ voyage,” Morton stated. “What’s new is that this Nice Atlantic Sargassum Belt that first appeared in 2011.”
What is exclusive in regards to the Nice Atlantic Sargassum Belt is that it fashioned exterior of the Sargasso Sea — which is positioned within the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of North America. Morton stated the sargassum belt has prolonged far exterior of the Sargasso Sea’s conventional boundaries, stretching in some circumstances all the best way to the coast of Africa.
The pure currents of the Atlantic Ocean trigger this nice mass of seaweed to periodically drift from Africa to South America and ultimately to North America, the place it’s deposited on seashores alongside the Texas and Florida coastlines, Morton stated.
“It is really beginning to develop off the coast of Africa and round January or February is when it form of actually begins to take off,” he stated. “That sargassum is then carried by ocean currents throughout the Atlantic to the coast of South America. … It continues to develop and is once more transported to the Caribbean and the Gulf to be deposited on the Yucatan Peninsula and all alongside the Texas shoreline.”
Morton’s space of experience offers with the dietary composition of sargassum, which he stated has been altering over the previous a number of many years. Whereas sargassum usually wants nitrogen and phosphorus to outlive, Morton stated it has lately begun to substitute its want for phosphorus with different compounds similar to arsenic.
“So when the sargassum is phosphorus-starved, it compromises high quality for amount and takes up different components which have chemistries much like that of phosphorus, a very powerful one being arsenic,” he stated. “It finally ends up changing into extremely enriched in arsenic, perhaps one million instances higher than what you’d discover within the seawater the place it grows.”
Whereas Morton stated the sargassum that washes up on shore isn’t harmful to the beach-going public, he and different researchers are attempting to piece collectively what’s inflicting this modification in vitamins and the way it could also be contributing to the seaweed’s exponential progress over the previous 14 years.
“It form of smells dangerous, however right here in Texas, there isn’t any rapid danger of publicity,” he stated. “It’s a pure factor that occurs. At sure instances, in sure areas, it turns into so intense that it turns into a possible risk.”
As for sargassum’s impression on the Atlantic ecosystem, Morton stated it will possibly have each constructive and destructive results.
“It does present a habitat. It’s like an ocean forest. Little fish, crabs, sea turtles and so many organisms form of use that as their habitat out within the ocean,” he stated. “However, like you’ll be able to think about, if this materials washes up in such plenty that if there is a sea turtle nest and it form of buries that nest, that impedes the freshly hatched sea turtles from reaching the ocean.”
Morton stated researchers haven’t but been in a position to confidently determine what’s inflicting the inflow of sargassum within the Atlantic, however that a few of the main theories place the partial blame on human-made pollution which have made their manner into the ocean.
“Proper now, we won’t say for positive what it’s that is driving the Nice Atlantic Sargassum Belt,” he stated. “However we’re trying into dietary values of what is coming from rivers, and what’s coming from differing types of aerosols which might be blowing from the continent into the distant ocean, together with industrial air pollution, biomass [rain forest] burning and Saharan mud.”
