The green brown terror is back -> Sargassum

One of the things you dont really think about when you have a Caribbean trip is seaweed. You think about white sandy beaches, azure blue water where you can see the bottom in, and the beach is spotless.

In general the Caribbean beaches are exactly this way, but in a certain period of the year this green brown monster also pays us a visit.

Sargassum is its name

And spoiling your beach fun is its game. Floating over the Atlantic which always has an Eastern current towards our little island to wash up on the shores there.

And now it is washing up on the shore with multiple feet at a time.

Which sucks because once it is one the shore it starts to rot and therefor be a potential threat to nesting turtles.

But apart from that it stinks A LOT because of this same rotting process

And its not super pleasant to walk through this nasty stuff, the dried out Sargassum scratches your skin a bit

What can we do about it??

Nothing really, I know some islands use the rotting process to create bio ethanol but I dont see that happening here any time soon actually, we cant even get rid of our 'normal' garbage. The increase of Sargassum over the last couple of years has to do with the rising sea water temperatures which makes a perfect breeding temperature for the seaweed.

What the difference is between Sargassum and other seaweed

Is that Sargassum has these little hollow balls attached to it as you can see. This will make the seaweed float and travel a large distance. From a plane you can even see these large fields floating over the water. Sometimes the current will let these little balls break of and stack up in a corner on the beach. Then you literally can hear a clinging sound from these balls collapsing on each other. Strange sound!

The only soul that is happy with this seaweed??

Is the one that loves to roll in dead fish that washes up together with the seasweed :)

All images were taken by me