Winds stir up dirty surf
Mitch Roffer noticed strange orange-brown patches in the surf Monday morning.
He wondered if it might be an oil spill.
Upon closer examination, Roffer, who has a doctorate in oceanography from the University of Miami, came to a different conclusion.
"It turns out that it's a bunch of Sargassum weed and the little tiny ball floats," said Roffer, founder Roffer's Ocean Fishing Forecasting Service Inc. in Melbourne Beach.
The tiny ball floats are part of the plant and resemble little marbles floating in the water.
A similar seaweed surge happened along the Space Coast in July and last fall.
Seasonal winds and currents drive the weed buildups.
Biologists say the vegetation is beneficial to the beach because it provides food for birds, crabs and other wildlife and habitat for hiding. So raking the stuff off the beach can be controversial, often pitting tourism against conservation interests.
In July, thick globs of dark-brown, rancid Sargassum fouled the air and blanketed large swaths of beach near Jetty Park.
In October 2014, massive amounts of Sargassum annoyed anglers all along the eastern United States. For months, the weed nagged fishermen from the Caribbean to Massachusetts, forcing them out of certain areas after they kept reeling in clumps of the stuff. Huge Sargassum blooms hit the east coast of Barbados and Puerto Rico as well, blanketing coastal waters and beaches.
Some scientists likened that seaweed surge to a similar widespread Sargassum bloom that harmed fisheries and tourism in the Caribbean in 2011. Biologists have yet to pin down causes, or whether the seaweed onslaughts are just normal cycles.
Much of the seaweed originates in the Gulf of Mexico, biologists say.
Sargassum is a constant presence in the open Atlantic, so much so that a large swath of the North Atlantic is known as the Sargasso Sea. Experts say sustained winds, combined with seasonal shifts in the Gulf Stream, usually are responsible for sudden abundances on local beaches.
Most of the beach's wrack line is Sargassum, which mostly drifts in long lines near the Gulf Stream and provides vital food for young sea turtles. On the beach, the plant serves as fodder for crabs, beetles and other small creatures, which, in turn, are food for shorebirds.
The wrack line also is important for collecting wind-blown sand and encouraging plants, which help hold dunes in place to protect property.
Local governments generally rake beaches for litter, avoiding the wrack line.
There have also been isolated reports of dead seabirds in the Satellite Beach area but those are not thought to be related to the Sargassum surge.
"There's nothing that's on our radar," said Frank McCloy, spokesman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
FWC tests for red tide have found the algae in high concentrations in southwestern Florida, but not present in Brevard County or elsewhere in eastern Florida.
"We are not seeing anything in Brevard County," McCloy said of red tide.