![]() ![]() Because it’s free-floating, the sargassum moves around, making it tough to measure. Scattered across this sea are huge mats of sargassum, floating with the aid of grape-like bubbles of trapped air that act as little buoys. The Sargasso Sea is about a thousand miles wide and three thousand miles long, roughly the size of the United States. Freshwater and Marine Image Bank/Public domain ![]() These various currents bring in and then trap anything that floats within that portion of the Atlantic, creating both the Sargasso Sea and the North Atlantic Garbage Patch. Instead it’s bounded by currents, including the all-powerful Gulf Stream, which runs up the East Coast of North America. It is a truly unusual place, the only location given a proper “Something Sea” name but with no land boundaries. Sargassum gives its name to the Sargasso Sea, located in the Atlantic, north and east of the Caribbean. “So yes, in the long-term history, this is very unusual.” “Prior to 2011, there was almost no sargassum impact in the Caribbean,” says Chuanmin Hu, a professor of optical oceanography at the University of South Florida who has studied sargassum for about a decade. In 20, the blooms were much bigger than they had been before 2011. ![]()
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