During Christopher Columbus's voyage of discovery across the Atlantic, he was amazed to find floating mass of seaweed as far east as the Azores. It looked like a carpet of little yellow grapes so they called it Sargasso (a generic name in Spanish for seaweeds with a brown color and with an obvious stalk and root; the Sargasso Sea is "El mar de los Sargazos"). Sargassum is a brown algae and the ‘grapes’ are the air bladders, which keep it afloat. It may look like the attached marine plants found in coastal waters, but it’s found in the middle of the North Atlantic Gyre. The area, of about 2 million square miles, is known as the Sargasso Sea. Fast forward some hundred years later an we have an epidemic in the small islands of Caribbean.
these shots were taken in my home village Windward.
At first it was just a small patch but now it's a whole lot and trust me it has a putrid smell worse than a skunk when it's decaying.
The route problem is the shift in the currants from the gulf, which is drawing the influx of Sargasso to the Caribbean rather than it's original route to Africa. Every year it gets worse i mean who likes to smell rotting fish guts mixed with pig shit for 2 months straight an summer holiday is right around the corner, sad.
:)
