Students attending Waves Surf Academy’s camp at Delray Breakers on the Ocean keep cool while combing sargassum for sea critters. From left are Jenna Miranda, Delray Beach, Hazel Aurelien, Boynton Beach, Mason Miranda, Delray Beach, Mary Junghans, Montana, and Lena Winikoff, Boca Raton. Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star
Unexpected departure of mass is (mostly) good news for coast
By Jane Musgrave
When a giant blob of seagrass that fouled area beaches in May and June suddenly dissipated, coastal municipal leaders breathed deep sighs of relief.
To the admitted surprise of researchers, who predicted Florida beaches would be inundated with the smelly stuff all summer, the giant mass of sargassum all but disappeared from the Gulf of Mexico and moved significantly away from the east coast of Florida.
Calling the retreat “beyond expectation,” oceanographers at the University of South Florida acknowledged that no people would be disappointed that they would not have to share the beach with the large brown clumps that smell like rotten eggs and make swimming unpleasant.
“This trend may continue in the next two to three months, which should be good news to the residents living in the Florida Keys and east coast of Florida,” the researchers wrote in a June 30 report.
By the end of July, what had been a nearly 10-ton mass shrank again, to roughly 61/2 tons, researchers said. “Some of this may have already reached and will continue to reach the Florida Keys and possibly the southeast coast of Florida, but the amount should be small,” they said in a July 31 report.
Officials in most coastal municipalities in southern Palm Beach County cheered the news. Had the once 13-million-ton mass set its course for the east coast, cleanup could have been costly.
Delray Beach already spends $78,000 a year to hire a firm to rake its beaches. Although Boca Raton uses city crews, it was lining up an outside company to step in if mounds of seaweed began to pile up.
For Ocean Ridge, however, the news was a mixed blessing.
Hoping to turn seaborne lemons into potentially lifesaving lemonade, town officials had hoped to use the seaweed to shore up rapidly eroding dunes and protect oceanfront homes and property during hurricane season.
But, while the Florida Department of Environmental Protection tentatively signed off on the proposal, it said no work could begin until the sea turtle nesting season ends Oct. 31.
Vice Mayor Steve Coz, who had championed the plan, said the delay could be potentially devastating. August and September are considered the height of the hurricane season.
Even the small amount of sargassum that is still reaching the shore could be used to fortify crumbling dunes along a 200-foot stretch north of Woolbright Road, he said.
“It’s ridiculous,” he said of the delay. “At least we could attempt to protect that neighborhood. Now, we can’t even do that.”
He said his concern is exacerbated because of reports that ocean water temperatures have hit record highs. Warm water fuels hurricanes as they spin across the Atlantic Ocean.
“With warm water, we’re more prone to having a storm,” Coz said. But, he fumed, the state agency is prohibiting the town from doing anything to protect oceanfront property.
Sargassum, like sea turtles, arrives mainly during the summer months. State and national environmental rules have long protected the endangered and threatened sea creatures from man-made interference.
While sargassum might be annoying to beachgoers, it is critical for sea turtles’ survival. Hatchlings that make it to the ocean use the macroalgae as lifeboats. Sargassum protects them from predators and provides them a food source.
With more than 40,000 nests laid each year, Palm Beach County is one of the state’s top destinations for sea turtles. It is important that they are protected, said Andy Studt, supervisor of coastal resources management for the county’s Department of Environmental Resources Management.
Recognizing its importance to sea turtles, the county has long had a hands-off approach to dealing with sargassum, he said.
Like municipal officials, Studt said he was relieved the 5,000-mile-long blob has shifted away from Florida and is instead expected to impact Caribbean islands, including Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and the Lesser Antilles.
But Studt didn’t voice surprise at the drastic shift in the sargassum forecast. Predicting Mother Nature is always difficult, he said, and figuring where the massive belt of sargassum is headed is particularly problematic.
It is pushed by the winds, currents and other factors that can change dramatically, Studt said.
Unexpectedly strong winds in the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico may have pushed it away from Florida and caused some of it to sink, researchers said.
Coz acknowledged that escaping the sargassum storm is good news.
“The big blob isn’t going to happen. I’m so happy about that,” he said. “But we’re still going to have seaweed on the beach. We just want to bring it to the edge of the dune and sprinkle it with sand to protect it in case we do get inundated by a large storm.”
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