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NASA's Earth Observation satellites have spotted the world's largest seaweed overgrowth, a seaweed belt spanning 8,850 kilometers from Africa. the West up to the Gulf of Mexico.
Brown algae, called the Great Sargassum Atlantic Belt, have floated on the surface of the tropical Atlantic Ocean for eight years. By 2018, more than 20 million tons of algae were spread along the coasts of the tropical Atlantic Ocean, the Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico and the East Coast of Florida .
"The magnitude of these blooms is really huge, making global satellite imagery a good tool for detecting and tracking their dynamics over time," said Woody Turner, head of the ecological forecasting program at HQ. NASA in Washington, in a statement.
Related: Earth Day 2019: These amazing images of NASA show the Earth from above
Researchers from the College of Ocean Sciences at the University of South Florida (USF) in St. Petersburg used satellite observations between 2000 and 2018 to study the proliferation of algae in the hope to determine its potential cause.
Data collected from an instrument called MODIS (Spectroradiadiology Imaging Resolution Modror) aboard NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites indicate a change in 2011, when it appeared in places never seen before, suggesting that the Proliferation is forming in common responses, according to the statement.
"The chemistry of the ocean must have changed so that the proliferation is so unmanageable," said Chuanmin Hu, an oceanographer from the USF College of Marine Science and senior author of the study, in his statement.
In normal times, Sargassum contributes to the health of marine life by providing habitat for fish, turtles, crabs and even birds. However, too much of this algae can have a choking effect on these marine animals, according to the study.
"All of this is ultimately linked to climate change because the climate affects rainfall, ocean circulation and even human activities" that can lead to the proliferation of Sargassum, Hu said. "They are probably here to stay."
The study was published in the journal Science on July 5th.
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