© 2024 WMRA and WEMC
WMRA : More News, Less Noise WEMC: The Valley's Home for Classical Music
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

A massive seaweed blob is floating Florida's way

Seaweed covers the Atlantic shore in Frigate Bay, St. Kitts and Nevis, Wednesday, Aug. 3, 2022. (Ricardo Mazalan/AP)
Seaweed covers the Atlantic shore in Frigate Bay, St. Kitts and Nevis, Wednesday, Aug. 3, 2022. (Ricardo Mazalan/AP)

A 5,000-mile stretch of smelly seaweed, known as sargassum, is drifting toward the Gulf of Mexico and Florida shores. The mass, referred to as the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt, is expected to make landfall across coastlines this summer, threatening potential tourists and beachgoers with its sulfur-like smell.

Here & Now‘s Deepa Fernandes speaks with Brian Lapointe, a research professor at Florida Atlantic University, about what’s driving this unusually large bloom.

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.

Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.