How pollution and climate change may have caused the Florida seaweed blob

[Judi Lynn]

Ben Adler·Senior Editor
Fri, March 17, 2023 at 1:40 PM CDT·4 min read

A 5,000 mile-long blob of slimy, smelly seaweed is headed for Florida’s beaches on the Gulf of Mexico, and it’s partly because of human activity, including water pollution and climate change.

The mass of sargassum — a large, brown seaweed — is moving west from the Caribbean, where it has left unsightly deposits on beaches near Cancun, Mexico and in Key West, Florida.

Sargassum is a microalgae, an organism that lives in the water and converts sunlight, water and carbon dioxide into a biomass.

Sargassum occurs naturally, but various forms of pollution have been causing it to grow more rapidly since 2011, when it was first large enough to be detected by satellite. The annual March-October algae season in the Atlantic Ocean has set a new record for size in each of the last five years, according to the Independent. This year’s bloom stretches all the way to Africa, is 200 to 300 miles wide, and has been doubling in size every month since November.

More:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/how-pollution-and-climate-change-may-have-caused-the-florida-seaweed-blob-184045826.html

[NNadir]

1. At one point, I referenced a paper on this subject here, trying to discern the carbon content...

...for use in reforming to capture carbon.

I just found that post and restored the graphics in it: The Very Modest Carbon Capture Potential of the Massive Sargassum Blooms.

I was disappointed, going through the calculation.

I discussed process engineering for sargassum processing here: Can We Recover Carbon Dioxide From the Atmosphere Using Sargassum Seaweed?

[orthoclad]

2. If we could

burst the flotation bladders simply and cheaply, we could "sink" large masses of carbon. Sargassum needs the gas bladders to float. The sea bottom would be good storage for that carbon.

Going out on a limb: PV-powered rafts with electric motors turning blades to cut the mass enough to break bladders? Probably not that simple. How tough are the bladders?

[NNadir]

3. I like your thinking...

Your idea wouldn't work at all, but it's creative.

Unworkable ideas can lead to good ideas, if one has, in the first place, ideas.

The links in my previous post on this topic (links to posts I made previously referencing the primary scientific literature) gives an idea of the carbon content of all this sargassum. As massive as it is, it would be, if all the carbon in them captured, a drop in the bucket compared to the 35 billion tons (and rising) quantities of carbon dioxide each year while we all wait, increasingly breathlessly, for the grand so called "renewable energy" nirvana that has not come, is not here, and won't come.

Making the solar cells for the rafts, as you propose, and including the environmental and material costs of making batteries for the rafts would easily negate any value.

I've had lots of bad ideas in my life time; sometimes they come back to me, greatly modified by the fact that I have gathered more information.