Gary Brown: Destruction of the planet by deadly seaweed?
I don't want to sound like an alarmist, but I heard something troubling the other day.
DEADLY, SLIMY, CHOKING SEAWEED IS HEADED FOR THE GULF COAST!
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You might have seen a headline about it in a tabloid magazine, right above the alien invasion story. Or, maybe you heard it talked about in the second hour of the morning news shows, right after a segment on how to grab good prices for airline tickets or get the most out of your food budget. Perhaps you even heard about the seaweed from traditional media, reading about it in a daily newspaper or hearing of it on a nightly newscast, because we all seem a little concerned about it, when they aren't busy worrying about political turmoil, economic downturns, crime in the street, and perturbing threats of world war.
"Large amounts of Sargassum are projected to hit the Gulf Coast shores, including Florida, this summer," according to an article published last month in USA Today.
Apparently, this smelly seaweed invasion is coming earlier than usual.
"Though the 'seaweed season' is March through October, it started appearing ahead of schedule in the Key West area and in Cancun, Mexico," USA Today continued.
Which raises some disturbing questions.
We have a seaweed season? And it's smelly? Now maybe it's turned deadly? Why didn't anyone ever tell inland folks about this before now?
One of the worst things that can happen to you is for the world to end right before you have a vacation scheduled at the beach.
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Other ways to go
Not that seaweed is the only way havoc can be wreaked on civilization as we know it.
I used to think that the poets had it right concerning the end of the world.
"Some say the world will end in fire,
"Some say in ice."
Robert Frost wrote those words in a brief poem. Not to "reader-splain" because most of you probably know more about the poem than I do, but apparently it's a metaphor about the human race causing its own demise from the heat of our desires or the coldness of our hatred. I've read it over multiple times, including the lines that followed about how Frost maintained that he would "favor fire" but destruction by ice "would suffice."
It's a little dark, but somehow revealing. According to Frost, either way, we're goners.
With the way we've treated out planet, it's sort of poetic justice.
Not that there aren't a multitude of ways for the world to end. Nuclear war. Global warming. Contagious diseases. Giant meteors. All of the biblical predictions.
Now we have seaweed to worry about. It appears from a PBS.org article, "a 5,000-mile seaweed belt is headed toward the coast of Florida.
Tell the snowbirds to fly back north right now.
Seaweed not a way to go
Wait, it seems that seaweed – they call it The Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt – might not be the end of us, according to the PBS piece.
"Once it washes ashore, sargassum is a nuisance – a thick, brown algae that carpets beaches, releasing a pungent smell as it decays and ensnares humans and animals who step into it. For hotels and resorts, clearing the stuff off beaches can amount to a round-the-clock operation."
So, as it turns out, people aren't going to shout "RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!" They're just going to ask, "Pew, what's that smell?" Or they're observe, "Look, it got all over my new shoes!"
So, never mind, as far as the end of the world goes. Forget I said anything about the "DEADLY SEAWEED." It's going to stink. It might hurt tourism for awhile. But, it's not going to destroy the planet.
As it turns out, it probably won't be much more of a problem than any of the "ASTEROIDS HEADING TOWARD EARTH" that didn't hit us.
Reach Gary at gary.brown.rep@gmail.com. On Twitter: @gbrownREP.
This article originally appeared on The Repository: Gary Brown: Destruction of the planet by deadly seaweed?
