Oceanography The Official Magazine of
The Oceanography Society
Volume 28 Issue 03

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Volume 28, No. 3
Pages 8 - 10

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RIP CURRENT – NEWS IN OCEANOGRAPHY • Recent Sargassum Inundation Events in the Caribbean: Shipboard Observations Reveal Dominance of a Previously Rare Form

By Jeffrey M. Schell , Deborah S. Goodwin, and Amy N.S. Siuda 
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During June 2011, pelagic Sargassum began washing ashore along Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico, West African, and Brazilian coastlines in unprecedented quantities. Tourist beaches were covered by more than a meter of seaweed. Economic impacts of this Atlantic basin-scale inundation event drew international media attention (Higgins, 2011). By summer 2012, our shipboard observations suggested the Caribbean portion of the event had run its course. However, another similarly extensive Sargassum inundation was underway by April 2014, persisting through 2015 (MercoPress, 2015).

Citation

Schell, J.M., D.S. Goodwin, and A.N.S. Siuda. 2015. Recent Sargassum inundation events in the Caribbean: Shipboard observations reveal dominance of a previously rare form. Oceanography 28(3):8–10, https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2015.70.

References

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Gower, J., E. Young, and S. King. 2013. Satellite images suggest a new Sargassum source region in 2011. Remote Sensing Letters 4:764–773, https://doi.org/10.1080/2150704X.2013.796433.

Higgins, M. 2011. Where’s the Beach? Under the Seaweedhttp://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/16/travel/caribbean-beaches-dig-out-from-massive-seaweed-invasion.html.

Johnson, D., D. Ko, J. Franks, P. Moreno, and G. Sanchez-Rubio. 2013. The Sargassum invasion of the eastern Caribbean and dynamics of the equatorial North Atlantic. Pp. 102–103 in Proceedings of the 65th Annual Gulf and Caribbean Fisheries Institute Conference, November 5–9, 2012. Gulf and Caribbean Fisheries Institute, Santa Marta, Columbia.

MercoPress. 2015. Sargassum Bloom are Ruining Caribbean Beaches and Tourism Season.http://en.mercopress.com/2015/08/12/sargassum-bloom-are-ruining-caribbean-beaches-and-tourism-season.

Moser, M., and D. Lee. 2012. Foraging over Sargassum by western North Atlantic seabirds. The Wilson Journal of Ornithology 124:66–72, https://doi.org/10.1676/11-067.1.

Parr, A. 1939. Quantitative Observations on the Pelagic Sargassum Vegetation of the Western North Atlantic. Bulletin of the Bingham Oceanographic Collection, vol. VI, part 7. Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University, New Haven, CT, 93 pp.

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Winge, O. 1923. The Sargasso Sea, Its Boundaries and Vegetation. Report on the Danish Oceanographical Expeditions 1908-10 to the Mediterranean and Adjacent Seas, Volume III: Miscellaneous Papers. Carlsberg Physiological Laboratory, Copenhagen, Denmark, 33 pp.

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