Seaweed on Pensacola Beach is no cause for concern, experts say. Here's why.
Seaweed that washed up this week on Pensacola Beach in the vicinity of Avenida 16 may prove a nuisance to those who enjoy frequenting that particular slice of coastline, but it is not, according to Escambia County Marine Resource Division Director Robert Turpin, a precursor to a historic sargassum invasion.
"The amount out there right now is minimal," Turpin said. "We'll know when it's doing something excessive."
Turpin said the band of sargassum that washed ashore on Pensacola Beach has only impacted about a mile of shoreline and he has not heard reports from charter fishermen or other seafarers to alert him that more seaweed is on the way.
More on "the blob": Big, stinky blob of algae takes aim at Florida beaches. What's causing it? Is it climate change?
Related: Escambia, Santa Rosa ready for 5,000-mile-wide sargassum blob moving toward Florida
Santa Rosa County Tourist Development Council President Julie White reported she had driven over the entirety of Navarre Beach Tuesday morning and not seen the first sign of sargassum.
Nonetheless, visitors and area residents might look a little more concerned this year than most as the slimy and sometimes smelly brown macroalgae known as sargassum, or seaweed, washes ashore as it has for centuries. That's because for a couple of months now, news reports have chronicled the record amounts of the stuff meandering about in the Atlantic Ocean, the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico.
Since 2011, scientists have been monitoring the growth of a 5,000-mile long train of sargassum, and "just this April, sargassum levels in the Caribbean Sea reached a new record, with the overall belt growing to an estimated 13 million tons," NPR reported, quoting a bulletin sent out by the University of South Florida Optical Oceanography lab.
The creeping sargassum has already inundated some areas of Florida. Things have gotten bad enough in some places in the Florida Keys that economists were projecting multi-million losses to the tourist industry.
Turpin said he happened to be down in the Keys a week or so ago and noticed differences in the way the shorelines there are configured as compared to those in Northwest Florida. The seaweed that comes ashore in South Florida tends to run up against sea walls or other structures that don't allow it to wash onto the beach and decompose.
"It only starts becoming a problem for us if it comes in in excessive amounts and the sun can't dry it out," he said. "Nothing I saw down there gave me a sense of undo concern for us here."
The University of South Florida is renowned for its tracking of the big band of seaweed. Its website reported "substantial sargassum" in both the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico in April and May and projects "continuing impacts throughout most of the region" as the mass reaches its peak growth season of June and July.
The local impact: A 5,000-mile-wide mass of seaweed is headed for Florida. Is Pensacola Beach at risk?
"It's expected to increase over the next few months with impacts of beach events worsening accordingly," the website said. "Abundance in the Gulf of Mexico is likely to increase substantially."
But Jane Caffrey, a professor with the University of West Florida for Environmental Diagnostics and bioremediation, doesn't think beachgoers need to develop seaweed anxiety.
"This year we haven't seen anything like we did last year. The fact there is sargassum on the beach does not mean its part of that gigantic blob. We see sargassum on the beach every year." she said. "People need not be so anxious when they see sargassum out there."
This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Sargassum on Pensacola Beach not part of massive seaweed blob
