Heading to the beach? Get ready for thick, slimy seaweed

More than 1,000 square miles of seaweed have been detected in satellite photos of the Caribbean, three times larger than the 2015 record.
Trinidad, West Indies. Giant wrack-line of Sargassum. Height here exceeded 2 m. The wall was definitely a barrier to nesting turtles. Captions: A Tale of Two Beaches: Tompire Bay, NE Trinidad; By John Weber, William Neal & Jeanette Arkle. Photo courtesy of: © Jeanette Arkle.

Excerpts;

Thick mats of seaweed have washed up on South Florida beaches in recent weeks, creating a tangled, squishy barrier between swimmers and the ocean.

The seaweed, a brownish variety called sargassum, arrived largely from the Caribbean, where rotting seaweed has piled up on beaches and driven away tourists…

Read Full Article; Sun Sentinel (06-20-2018)

Mysterious masses of seaweed assault Caribbean islands; Science Mag (06-11-2018)
The Caribbean is bracing for what could be the mother of all seaweed invasions, with satellite observations warning of record-setting Sargassum ​blooms and seaweed already swamping beaches…