Something Huge and Brown Is Taking Over the Atlantic Ocean
Since 2011, a monstrous structure has taken shape in the Atlantic Ocean almost every year, sprawling from the West African coast to the Gulf of Mexico. It’s the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt—a gargantuan bloom of a brown free-floating seaweed. In May, the seaweed belt hit a record biomass of 37.5 million tons. In a study published last month in the journal Harmful Algae, researchers from Florida Atlantic University’s (FAU) Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute outline the rapidly growing seawee