[Corrie22]

Originally Posted by kapikap

This is supposedly African and Brazil fertilizer waste.
Mexico states the sargasso is full of iron and other metals.

They didn't get that exactly right....

Plants need several things in order to grow.....and if any one of them is limiting...the plant won't grow

Sargassum is getting iron from Saharan dust/African dust...the same Saharan dust that causes red tide...and makes the Amazon rain forest possible....not African fertilizer waste

...and it's getting nitrogen and phosphorus from fertilizer runoff coming out of the Amazon

The highest concentration of sargassum grows in the gulf anyway....

BTW..there's more dust coming > https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/content/...s-saharan-dust

[Dave_n_Tenn]

Good info Corrie!

**You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Corrie22 again.

[Rabflmom]

Originally Posted by Corrie22

I was just thinking how times have changed...
When I was a kid...all of us kids couldn't wait until summer..when the sargassum would come in
We would spend the entire day hunting through it..not only for the shrimp...but crabs, brittle and serpent stars...tiny oceanic seahorses...and if you were really lucky..you would find frog fish, the ones that walk and climb around

..and if you were really really lucky...you could talk your Mom out of enough S&H Greenstamps to get a fish aquarium to put them in

Our families used to plan the 4th of July every year and get a place on Key Biscayne...you could bet...every year it was covered in sargassum...and every year, me, my cousins, neighbors kids...would spend the whole day having a ball seeing what we could find in it..that's is when we weren't throwing it at each other

...times have changed....now it's global warming

Seems to be only people who want to sunbathe have a real problem with it. Floridians know it is an important part of the environment for all of us. Kill off the sea weed and you kill off the food for some and creatures that other creatures feed on. It doesn't last forever when it washes in with the winds and the tides will eventually take it back out.

I am at the beach(central Florida) all the time and there really has only been a few days all year where there was a huge amount coming in and it is gone in a couple days. No big deal. It is an ocean.......not a swimming pool so deal with it tourists. Our governor needs to stay out of it and let the ocean ocean like it is supposed to.

[Dave_n_Tenn]

I have no issue with certain beaches "removing" the sargassum for people. I have a problem with those who link the normal-natural recurring cycles with some politically connected agenda.

[chopchop0]

Originally Posted by Dave_n_Tenn

I have no issue with certain beaches "removing" the sargassum for people. I have a problem with those who link the normal-natural recurring cycles with some politically connected agenda.

Climate change denial won't change the eventual outcome

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/e...food-security/

[kapikap]

In Mexico, they are also setting up nets a few miles out, to corral the sargasso, seems effective if done right. Some kind of work struggling fisherman can do for the US.

I would imagine a long string of the weed, full of life where other fish feed off of it. Good fishing nearby,no?

[sinatras]

This crap has been around since I was in diapers throwing it at my sister on the beach. Stinky seaweed is a FACT at Florida beaches in summer. Some have more than others.

[Dave_n_Tenn]

Any bateria get on you?

[beach43ofus]

Sargassum was first noticed by Christopher Columbus, so it pre-dates civilized society. It was once thought to entirely cover the Sargassum Sea making navigation impossible, and if that's true, it's diminshing.

Sargassum is like Red Tide, Earthquakes, volcanoes, eclipses, algae, Sun spots, climate change....the way of the World...Mother Nature. They all happened before human's evolved, and will continue to happen after human's are gone.

Human existence is a blink in time, and insignificant in the way of the World over Billions of years. We are a cosmic spec of dust.

But hey, let's blame everything that comes along in nature on global warming....er...I mean climate change, and blame climate change on people that disagree with us on just about everthing else so we can enslave them, and take all their stuff.

[Dave_n_Tenn]

There is always an attempt to "demonize" anything that is misunderstood. Back in the day we burned witches and demons, and now the ignorant are forced to creates demons to sacrifice, but I digress.

Just the other day there were probably 100 baby sea turtles gathered under a floating mass of weed... while we filled the fix box with Mahi.