Why Waves of Seaweed Have Been Smothering Caribbean Beaches

In 2018, as seaweed piled up on beaches throughout the Caribbean, it began to rot. Already stinking and sulfurous, the thick layers began to attract insects and repel tourists. The seaweed—a type of brown algae called sargassum—had grown in the ocean and washed ashore in unprecedented quantities. It prevented fishers from getting into the water, and entangled their nets and propellers. It entangled sea turtles and dolphins, too, fatally preventing them from surfacing for air. It died and sank offshore, smothering seagrass meadows and coral reefs. Barbados declared a national emergency.

In normal years, sargassum is a blessing rather than a curse. Mats of it drift around the ocean, held afloat by gas-filled bladders that look like grapes. They accumulate in the North Atlantic, —a region that the explorer Sylvia Earle has described as a “.” The fronds are