"Scientists have warned of a potential regime shift in the oceans, as the rapid growth of huge mats of seaweed appears to be driven by global heating and excessive enrichment of waters from farming runoff and other pollutants. Over the past two decades, seaweed blooms have expanded by a staggering 13.4% a year in the tropical Atlantic and western Pacific, with the most dramatic increases occurring after 2008, according to researchers at the University of South Florida."
"Lethal algae blooms an ecosystem out of balance In a new paper, they say this shift could darken the waters below, changing their ecology and geochemistry, and may also accelerate climate breakdown. Before 2008, there were no major blooms of macroalgae [seaweed] reported except for sargassum in the Sargasso Sea, said Chuanmin Hu, a professor of oceanography at the USF College of Marine Science and the paper's senior author."
Seaweed blooms have expanded by 13.4% per year in the tropical Atlantic and western Pacific over the past two decades, with dramatic increases after 2008. Growth of large floating macroalgae mats appears driven by global heating and nutrient enrichment from agricultural runoff and other pollutants. Major bloom systems include the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to the Congo, a ring around the Chatham Islands, and red tides off Florida. Artificial intelligence analysis of 1.2 million satellite images detected widespread floating algae, indicating a shift from a macroalgae-poor to a macroalgae-rich ocean that could darken waters and alter marine ecology, geochemistry, and climate dynamics.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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