New Life for Rotting Seaweed | Nautilus

Each time Loretta Roberson finds herself in an ominous shadow while scuba diving off the coast of Puerto Rico, she discovers that the culprit is Sargassum—large mats of golden-brown seaweed floating overhead. 

Roberson, a scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, has led a team to develop a seaweed farm in Puerto Rico for several years. But unlike the varieties grown at the farm, and unlike most seaweeds, the genus Sargassum includes species that spend their entire lives floating in the ocean waves. Air-filled bladders the size of small peas called pneumatocysts buoy the algae up to the sea surface where its ochre fronds aggregate to form enormous rafts.

For more than a decade, the amount of Sargassum has exploded in tropical Atlantic and Caribbean waters. “There’s always been Sargassum in the Caribbean, but not at the levels that we’re seeing now,” says Roberson. Read the rest of the story here. 

Source: New Life for Rotting Seaweed | Nautilus