Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're actually
Speaker 1: bringing you a vault episode to help get us through
Speaker 1: some some people being out of office here and there
Speaker 1: over the next couple of weeks. So today's episode originally
Speaker 1: published April nine, and it was on the Sargassum Seaweed.
Speaker 1: That's right. This is the fun episode, full of fantastic
Speaker 1: creatures in a wonderful environment and also a few allusions
Speaker 1: to a movie we discussed on Weird How Cinema Z
Speaker 1: also known as the Blood Waters of Dr Z. So
Speaker 1: if you're interested in that Weird How Cinema episode, you'll
Speaker 1: find that in the back catalog. Now, to lay things
Speaker 1: out for you, I think we do have a fresh
Speaker 1: original episode coming up for you on Thursday of this week.
Speaker 1: Then we'll have a few more vaults for you the
Speaker 1: week after that, But then we should be back with
Speaker 1: all new things once again. Right, Welcome to Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind, production of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome
Speaker 1: to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert
Speaker 1: Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're going to
Speaker 1: go into the wettest of the woods, the saltiest of
Speaker 1: the woods. Today the woods are salty, dark and deep.
Speaker 1: And and we have promises to keep and miles to
Speaker 1: float before we sleep, because we're going to be looking
Speaker 1: at a sort of jungle in the ocean. That's right. Uh.
Speaker 1: The ocean. Uh, it knows quite a mix of environments,
Speaker 1: from rich coral reefs to desolate deep sea waste, from
Speaker 1: sunlit shallows to hydrothermal vent heated depths. Marine organisms, of course,
Speaker 1: face numerous challenges, but the most basic demands boiled down to,
Speaker 1: you know, how not to end, how not to die,
Speaker 1: how to prolong? It's era to quote waiting for the barbarians.
Speaker 1: But this is especially of your small or your young organism.
Speaker 1: You're gonna need food, and you're gonna need shelter. Uh,
Speaker 1: And there's always going to be something trying to eat you.
Speaker 1: And for a number of organisms, this is provided by Sargassum,
Speaker 1: a genus of brown seaweed of sometimes brown, sometimes described
Speaker 1: as brown and orange um as well. Discuss there a
Speaker 1: number of different species here, but uh. Sargassum thrives abundantly
Speaker 1: in the ocean. It floats free of the ocean floor
Speaker 1: It provides a buoyant, free floating environment that travels on
Speaker 1: the tides and offers food, refuge, breeding grounds, nurseries, hunting grounds,
Speaker 1: et cetera for a wide variety of organisms. So in
Speaker 1: this episode, we're going to discuss the sargassum organisms themselves,
Speaker 1: the environment that they offer, some of its benefactors, and
Speaker 1: also the problems posed by the so called Great Atlantic
Speaker 1: sargassum Belt. Yeah, and that last point is interesting because
Speaker 1: I will say, when you think of sea, do you
Speaker 1: think of the macroalgy world, you don't usually think of
Speaker 1: it as something that is particularly economically devastating or or
Speaker 1: or even economically all that significant. But but that that
Speaker 1: is not the case for sargassum. Yeah, as well. It's
Speaker 1: it's it's an interesting topic to explore because in its
Speaker 1: present form, it kind of cuts both ways. It's both
Speaker 1: vitally important to uh to so many organisms and a
Speaker 1: number of organisms that are then important to us, you know,
Speaker 1: various um uh you know marine species that we depend on,
Speaker 1: various fish and so forth. But then on the other hand, uh,
Speaker 1: in an environment that is increasingly out of balance, uh,
Speaker 1: it also poses a threat and it can pose quite
Speaker 1: a nuisance, So we'll get into all that. So what
Speaker 1: got you thinking about sargassum for today, Rob, Well, it's
Speaker 1: because tomorrow's episode of Weird House Cinema will entail sargassum
Speaker 1: and casual mention of a few of the creatures, one
Speaker 1: creature in particular that calls it home. Um. Well, we'll
Speaker 1: try to save all of that for tomorrow's episode. But
Speaker 1: but yeah, that was probably the first place I heard
Speaker 1: of sargassum, the Weed of deceit. I was wondering if
Speaker 1: we should announce the movie, but maybe we should just
Speaker 1: make everyone wait to find out if they're going to
Speaker 1: be wondering, Wait, is it a Jaws clone where it's
Speaker 1: a big raft of seaweed instead of a shark. Is
Speaker 1: it like the Blair Witch Project, but instead of getting
Speaker 1: lost in the woods of Virginia or wherever it is,
Speaker 1: you get lost in the woods of the ocean of
Speaker 1: the Sargasso Sea. Well that the truth will just suddenly
Speaker 1: strike out at them and there'll be nothing they can
Speaker 1: do about it. Uh So, So tune in tomorrow if
Speaker 1: you wish for that. But but for this episode, we're
Speaker 1: going to focus on first on on Sargassum. The the organism,
Speaker 1: so sargassum glimpsed in the ocean or on the beach,
Speaker 1: it might just look like a big heap of brown mess.
Speaker 1: But about closer look you'll notice that it's composed of branches,
Speaker 1: leafy bits, and what looked like plump berries. But they're
Speaker 1: not berries, So don't don't pick them. Uh, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess you could pick them, But what they are
Speaker 1: actually are newmaticists. These are air bubbles, um. Uh. They
Speaker 1: are part of the organism held that you know, in
Speaker 1: in these little cysts that help it excel at floating
Speaker 1: around right. Because of course, there are different types of seaweed,
Speaker 1: and some types of seaweed spend their life, you know,
Speaker 1: submerged in the water, and they might be say, anchored
Speaker 1: down by a type of organ known as a hold fast.
Speaker 1: That is somewhat analogous to like the root ball of
Speaker 1: a tree that holds it, except in the case of seaweed,
Speaker 1: it would hold clumps of seaweed to the ocean floor.
Speaker 1: Not entirely analogous, I mean, for many reasons, one of
Speaker 1: which is that, uh, is that the seaweed that we're
Speaker 1: talking about today is technically not even a plant. It
Speaker 1: is a type of macroalgae, which will explain more about.
Speaker 1: But in the case of sargassum, Uh, there are types
Speaker 1: of sargassum that are free floating organisms that spend much
Speaker 1: or all of their lives just floating on top of
Speaker 1: the water to have good access to sunlight, of course,
Speaker 1: which they need in order to make their food to survive.
Speaker 1: But they've got to just sit there and float on
Speaker 1: the top. And they're actually not even anchored to the
Speaker 1: bottom at all. They just float out in the open ocean.
Speaker 1: And I do just want to stress again that the
Speaker 1: genus is Sargassum, and there I believe about a hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty species um all sargassum. Uh. The hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty number, I got that from the Ocean Foundation, though
Speaker 1: curiously I saw some higher numbers out there as well.
Speaker 1: I don't know if those were accurate. I'm sticking with
Speaker 1: the one, right. So, there are different kinds that you'll find,
Speaker 1: especially in different parts of the oceans around the world,
Speaker 1: right Uh. And we'll be talking about some key ones though,
Speaker 1: that are the most abundant, or at least in the
Speaker 1: end of the part of the world that we're gonna
Speaker 1: be discussing here. So, as I mentioned, sargassum is a
Speaker 1: brown macroalgay, so it is different than plants. And how
Speaker 1: exactly is it different than plants? Yeah? I think this
Speaker 1: is also important to stress because if you don't think
Speaker 1: much about seaweed, you might just you know, you know,
Speaker 1: you might just as soon we all right, it's some
Speaker 1: sort of plant that grows in the water. Um, And
Speaker 1: I think that you might be reasonable to make that
Speaker 1: assumption just based on its physical appearance, and certainly the
Speaker 1: word seaweed um. Weeds are plants, yeah, yeah, And and
Speaker 1: seaweed is also used informally a lot of times to
Speaker 1: describe both the algae and some plant organisms. But the
Speaker 1: algae are protests, meaning they are uh eukaryotic organisms, which
Speaker 1: are not animals plants or fun gi um so land
Speaker 1: plants for their part, they likely derived from fresh water
Speaker 1: algae about five hundred million years ago. An algae is,
Speaker 1: of course, when we look at the just the root
Speaker 1: of the word um, they're synonymous with seaweed, as alga
Speaker 1: is the Latin for seaweed. Okay, so if you if
Speaker 1: you just think about algae like the most I would
Speaker 1: say if I was to go on my own personal
Speaker 1: life experience. When I hear the word algae by itself,
Speaker 1: what I tend to think of is kind of green
Speaker 1: pond scum, you know, kind of very like something floating
Speaker 1: on top of a stagnant freshwater body like a pond
Speaker 1: or a lake, that is made of tiny little fibers
Speaker 1: that just kind of clumped together. Doesn't have any recognizable
Speaker 1: macro structures the way larger plants like like flowers or
Speaker 1: trees would. But that is not true of all kinds
Speaker 1: of algae. These macro algaes that we see in these
Speaker 1: types of seaweed, they have more complex structures that are
Speaker 1: more like the structures of land plants. So they might
Speaker 1: have something that is akin to the stalk of a
Speaker 1: land plant and something that is akin to the leaves.
Speaker 1: In these cases, they would be algal fronds. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah again they look very plant like. You can
Speaker 1: easily look at them and say, oh, they're will leave,
Speaker 1: they're the berries. But uh, at any rate, again, a
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty different species of sargassum uh, though we're
Speaker 1: generally going to be talking about specific dominant species within
Speaker 1: given regions. For instance, the two varieties found most often
Speaker 1: in the Caribbean are Sargassum natan's and Sargassum fluitans um.
Speaker 1: I don't think it would be necessary to remember that,
Speaker 1: but just know that again, we're gonna we're probably gonna
Speaker 1: refer to sargassum a lot, just generally, but we're gonna
Speaker 1: ultimately be dealing with specific species that are dominant within
Speaker 1: a given a region. So sargassum reproduces a sexually through fragmentation,
Speaker 1: a form of a sexual reproduction in which parents split
Speaker 1: into fragments and those fragments then become adults. And furthermore,
Speaker 1: the Caribbean sargasm species in particular, and some of these
Speaker 1: other varieties that are important are hollow pelagic. That means
Speaker 1: that they not only float freely on the ocean, but
Speaker 1: they also reproduce vegetatively on the high seas. So they're
Speaker 1: they're completely in international waters, you know, they're they're they're
Speaker 1: they're a monkey knife fight that the land has no
Speaker 1: control over. So yeah, but that would mean that they
Speaker 1: don't they can do their whole life cycle without like
Speaker 1: anchoring to the bottom at any point or returning to
Speaker 1: shore or anything like that. Right, And that's gonna that's
Speaker 1: gonna becoming important later on. It get it really gets
Speaker 1: in ultimately the idea of sargassum being the wheat of
Speaker 1: the seed, so it grows abundantly in the ocean, where
Speaker 1: it forms vast floating rafts, as it's sometimes called. Though um,
Speaker 1: I don't think these are rafts in the sense that
Speaker 1: you could, you know, be a shipwrecked sailor at sea
Speaker 1: and climb on top of it or hoist a sail
Speaker 1: on it. But essentially just big rafts, big floating chunks
Speaker 1: of of the sargassum, all tingled together, stretching in some
Speaker 1: cases for miles, and these form in areas of converging
Speaker 1: surface currents u and in doing so they create a
Speaker 1: vital environment, like we alluded to earlier. But on top
Speaker 1: of the environment, the organism itself provides food. According to
Speaker 1: the Ocean Foundation, sargassum contributes and estimated six of the
Speaker 1: total primary production in the upper one meter of the
Speaker 1: water column. Okay, so that would refer to like different
Speaker 1: different stages of the food chain. So you've got the
Speaker 1: primary producers that are familiar to us. These are generally
Speaker 1: photosynthesizing organisms, like like plants on land, you know, that
Speaker 1: absorbs sunlight to power the chemical reactions that make their bodies.
Speaker 1: And then you've got the secondary uh, characters on the
Speaker 1: food chain that eat the primary producers. You know that
Speaker 1: that eat plants to survive, the same thing is true
Speaker 1: in the ocean. So you've got these primary producers that
Speaker 1: are at least near the top of the water column
Speaker 1: are going to be basing their their energy cycle on
Speaker 1: sunlight to to produce these molecules that make up their
Speaker 1: body that that in turn are eaten by other organisms
Speaker 1: that are the sort of the secondary organisms in that
Speaker 1: food chain. Yeah, it's it's like you said at the
Speaker 1: very beginning, this is the forest that we're discussing. Like
Speaker 1: in a way, don't think of the ocean itself as
Speaker 1: the forest. Think of the think of the sargassum. These
Speaker 1: going to these rafts of sargassum as the forest. Because
Speaker 1: the ocean, as we've discussed in the show before, the
Speaker 1: ocean can be a wasteland. The ocean can be a
Speaker 1: desert and um and in desert, the sargassum can be
Speaker 1: the oasis um. It serves as a place of refuge
Speaker 1: for various creatures as well as again breeding grounds nurseries.
Speaker 1: In fact, it's the primary nursery for a number of
Speaker 1: important to human to humans, especially fish species like the
Speaker 1: Ma ma. And given all of this activity that's going
Speaker 1: on at the various creatures that call it home, sometimes
Speaker 1: exclusively uh, their home, it's also prime stalking zone for
Speaker 1: many marine predators, So both sargasm predators who live there
Speaker 1: and have evolved a thrive in its environment, but also
Speaker 1: general marine apex predators that are drawn in by the by,
Speaker 1: by the riches there by the biodiversity. Uh, let's see
Speaker 1: if a few other just sort of general um facts
Speaker 1: about sargassum. It can survive wide temperature and salinity variances,
Speaker 1: and after about a year, those new maticists that help
Speaker 1: it to remain buoyant, uh, they lose their buoyancy and
Speaker 1: bits of sargassum will then sink to the sea floor,
Speaker 1: where it will actually been up providing carbon for various
Speaker 1: deep sea creatures. So it's not only an important energy
Speaker 1: source for the sunlit shallow regions of the sea, but
Speaker 1: for the dark depths as well. I guess, serving as
Speaker 1: kind of like that that nutrient rainfall that we've talked
Speaker 1: about before that rains upon the deep and indeed when
Speaker 1: it washes up on the shore. Uh. I guess for
Speaker 1: for the most part we're talking about it. If it's
Speaker 1: washing up in manageable quantities, um, it can actually nourish beaches,
Speaker 1: It can prevent sand from blowing away. Uh. And when
Speaker 1: it washes up, it also serves as a food source
Speaker 1: for various coastal species. Um. And not only is it
Speaker 1: generally not harmful to humans, it's actually edible. More than that,
Speaker 1: in a bit, uh, there are also possible biofuel and
Speaker 1: pharmaceutical possibilities for sargassum um. We'll get into some of
Speaker 1: the drawbacks later on, but but one of the interesting
Speaker 1: things here is that like the idea of just sargassum
Speaker 1: piling up on the beach again in manageable quality quant quantities,
Speaker 1: it does bring to mind that sort of contest, that
Speaker 1: disagreement at times over what constitutes the beach or what
Speaker 1: the beach should look like. You know, should there be
Speaker 1: anything on the beach other than um human strolling and
Speaker 1: enjoying their vacation. You know, uh, you know some of
Speaker 1: the some of the really beautiful beaches out there, a
Speaker 1: lot of times they are manicured, you know, things like
Speaker 1: seaweed are collected regularly in order to have that sort
Speaker 1: of Hollywood beach presented. Uh. And in many cases there's
Speaker 1: an argument to me, may then no debris would be
Speaker 1: on the beach naturally, and it in the right quantities,
Speaker 1: it can be important to keeping the sand from washing away,
Speaker 1: keeping the beach from eroding, etcetera. I can see the
Speaker 1: point of view that would say I'm okay with the
Speaker 1: beach that has natural debris, but not unmanageable amounts of
Speaker 1: natural debris or artificial debris. I mean you certainly you
Speaker 1: know you don't want too many beer cans. That's going
Speaker 1: to kind of ruin your beach experience. Yeah, nobody wants
Speaker 1: to step on a beer can on the beach, but likewise,
Speaker 1: nobody really wants to have to walk over a tin
Speaker 1: foot high a mound of urgassum like dead, rotting seaweed.
Speaker 1: Right right now, Um, we're gonna be getting into the
Speaker 1: history of humanities awareness and understanding of sargassum uh here.
Speaker 1: And the first bit I want to share is that
Speaker 1: you know, certainly early sailors described sargassum mats, and one
Speaker 1: individual in particular, Christopher Columbus UH This was in when
Speaker 1: abundance sargassum fooled Columbus into thinking he was approaching land.
Speaker 1: And I couldn't find anything that really defined this for me.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you did, Joe, but I assume
Speaker 1: this is what the term the weed of Deceit refers
Speaker 1: to the idea that you might encounter sargassum mats out
Speaker 1: at sea and you could make the same air that
Speaker 1: Columbus made and think, oh, look at all the seaweed. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's it's thick. It's everywhere. We must be really close
Speaker 1: to land at this point. Sure. I don't know that
Speaker 1: that's where the name comes from, but that makes sense. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So on September six, ain't Columbus road, And this is
Speaker 1: of course translated quote. We have begun to see large
Speaker 1: patches of yellowish green weed, which seems to have been
Speaker 1: torn away from some island or reef. I know better
Speaker 1: because I make the mainland to be farther on. And
Speaker 1: then on September sevent I saw a great deal of
Speaker 1: weed today from rocks that lie to the west. I
Speaker 1: take this to mean we are near land. The weed
Speaker 1: resembles a grass, except that it has long stalks and
Speaker 1: shoots and is loaded with fruit like the like the
Speaker 1: Mastic tree. Um. So, uh, you know, I guess on
Speaker 1: the on September six, it sounds like he was like, no,
Speaker 1: you can't fool me. We're not that close to land.
Speaker 1: But on September seventeen, he said, nope, we are close
Speaker 1: to land. Look at all this seaweed. I had to
Speaker 1: look up what the mastic tree is because I didn't know,
Speaker 1: but it's the but it's known as Pistachia lentiscus. Ah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I looked up a picture of it as well, and
Speaker 1: I do see some some prominent little round fruits that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the little berries that I assume that's that's what he
Speaker 1: was comparing to the what what are actually new maticists? Yea.
Speaker 1: As we mentioned earlier, the neumatis are these little tiny
Speaker 1: berry shaped gas bladders that helped the the seaweed float.
Speaker 1: But in this case, yeah, it looks kind of like
Speaker 1: these berries in a tree that would have been familiar
Speaker 1: to Columbus. I think the looking at the Mastic tree
Speaker 1: apparently is useful for its resin thank so. A special
Speaker 1: note is the Sargasso Sea. This is a truly vast
Speaker 1: patch of sargassum. According to the Ocean Foundation, the Sargasso
Speaker 1: Sea is sometimes referred to as the Atlantic Golden Rainforest
Speaker 1: UH and the islands quote unquote uh in the Sargasso
Speaker 1: Sea can be acres across, while the regions they occupy
Speaker 1: can stretch for miles. Right now, the Sargasso Sea is
Speaker 1: interesting because it is the only real sea in the
Speaker 1: world that doesn't have any land boundaries. The Sargasso Sea
Speaker 1: is a sea within an ocean. It's uh, this patch
Speaker 1: in the mid all of the Northern Atlantic. Basically, it's
Speaker 1: just a large patch if you were to look at
Speaker 1: the eastern coast of the United States, uh and you
Speaker 1: know in the Caribbean maybe with the bottom edge down
Speaker 1: around like Cuba and uh in Puerto Rico, and then
Speaker 1: going up along the the coast of North America up
Speaker 1: towards Newfoundland, and then you just extend out east from there.
Speaker 1: There's this big patch in the middle of the Atlantic
Speaker 1: Ocean which is known as the Sargasso Sea. Now we
Speaker 1: should be clear that it is not like blanket covered
Speaker 1: in sargassum seaweed, but there are It is known for
Speaker 1: having large rafts of sargassum seaweed within it, and the
Speaker 1: Sargasso Sea is interesting in a number of ways. One
Speaker 1: thing about it is it's known for having UH, for
Speaker 1: being a place where ships can easily become be calmed,
Speaker 1: and this is a a risk that people who are
Speaker 1: not very familiar with sea voyages might not think about
Speaker 1: very often. But back in the days of sailing, one
Speaker 1: thing that was really danger riss is if the winds
Speaker 1: die down and you can't say, you know, there's nothing
Speaker 1: to propel your ship in the direction where it needs
Speaker 1: to go. All throughout the the Atlantic around the Sargasso Sea,
Speaker 1: there tend to be these wind currents. You know they're
Speaker 1: there are winds that will blow you UH, that will
Speaker 1: blow you east to west, down from the from the
Speaker 1: coast of Africa, down towards UH, towards the Caribbean, and
Speaker 1: towards the northern coast of South America. And then there
Speaker 1: are winds and currents in the ocean that lead up
Speaker 1: north along the east coast of North America. And then
Speaker 1: if you go up north from there, there are winds
Speaker 1: and currents that will lead you back towards the east
Speaker 1: from the west. So essentially you create this box in
Speaker 1: the middle of the North Atlantic that is surrounded by
Speaker 1: currents that go in a circle around it, and this
Speaker 1: is often known as the North Atlantic Gyre. Now, anyone
Speaker 1: who's ever watched, you know, any number of sailing movies
Speaker 1: or TV shows, or any TV show that includes like
Speaker 1: a a voyage by sale across the ocean, This is
Speaker 1: a This is almost a standard bottle episode right here,
Speaker 1: where where suddenly the ship uh is in a is
Speaker 1: in a region where there's just no no wind at all,
Speaker 1: nothing could propel them, and everybody just sets around and
Speaker 1: gets like superstitious and uh a little bit crazy until
Speaker 1: the wind picks back up and saves everybody right. And
Speaker 1: you can imagine like if you actually were traveling across
Speaker 1: the Atlantic and you didn't know what you were what
Speaker 1: you were going to see, or what was going to
Speaker 1: be out there. Maybe you'd heard some tales of sea monsters.
Speaker 1: Who knows. You get into an area where there is
Speaker 1: less wind than you're used to than when you traveled
Speaker 1: into the area, you are suddenly be calmed. It becomes
Speaker 1: hard to travel and you're just kind of stuck there
Speaker 1: in the water. And then you start seeing these weird
Speaker 1: rafts floating around in the middle of the ocean. Towards you.
Speaker 1: I can imagine that's pretty odd, YEA. And in fact,
Speaker 1: we maybe don't have to imagine, because there are some
Speaker 1: historical sources that that may well be referring to this.
Speaker 1: I guess it's debatable whether they're referring to this or
Speaker 1: something else. But uh, I wanted to look at the
Speaker 1: question how long has the Sargasso Sea been written about? Uh.
Speaker 1: It gets its current name from Portuguese sailors. I believe
Speaker 1: of like you know, the the early modern period, or
Speaker 1: actually I think before that, from like the fifteenth century.
Speaker 1: But but I was looking around to see how far
Speaker 1: back written accounts of the Sargasso c go. And I
Speaker 1: found an interesting, possibly applicable bit of history in a
Speaker 1: book by the British archaeologist and Oxford professor Sir Barry Cunliffe. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the book is called on the Ocean, the Mediterranean
Speaker 1: and Atlantic from Prehistory to a d fIF hundred from
Speaker 1: Oxford University Press in And this is in a chapter
Speaker 1: where Cunliffe is writing about records of exploration west of
Speaker 1: the Pillars of Heracles. So the Pillars of Heracles today
Speaker 1: are understood to refer to the Strait of Gibraltar, that
Speaker 1: gap between between Morocco and the Iberian Peninsula, where you
Speaker 1: can just go through this narrow passage to get out
Speaker 1: of the Mediterranean Sea and into the broad Atlantic Ocean.
Speaker 1: And so he's writing about the exploration beyond this point
Speaker 1: out to the west by the ancient cultures of North Africa, Europe,
Speaker 1: and Central Asia. And for for most of these cultures,
Speaker 1: the Mediterranean Sea was of course their bread and butter.
Speaker 1: I mean, the sea, even the Mediterranean Sea has has
Speaker 1: plenty of dangers and mysteries to it. But sea voyages
Speaker 1: within this region where you know, we're well understood for
Speaker 1: for trade and and exploration and warfare and fishing and
Speaker 1: all that. But sea voyages west into the Atlantic Ocean
Speaker 1: or another story. And so you get plenty of tales
Speaker 1: and say Greek thought and Greek mythology about islands that
Speaker 1: maybe lay out to the west of the Pillars of Hercules,
Speaker 1: way out there in the ocean that that is mostly
Speaker 1: unexplored by your people. Most of the early explorers who
Speaker 1: passed west of Gibraltar did so in order to travel
Speaker 1: along the coast to the north or south. So this
Speaker 1: would be traveling up along the coast of the Iberian
Speaker 1: Peninsula to form these ports, along places like Cadiz that
Speaker 1: became a Phoenician port, or south along the coast of Africa.
Speaker 1: The Phoenicians and the Greeks did this to various extents,
Speaker 1: but the vast and presumably mostly empty Atlantic Ocean was
Speaker 1: not not among everybody, but widely assumed in ancient times
Speaker 1: to be a place of mystery and danger, especially by
Speaker 1: Greek authors. And Kunlife gives the example of the ancient
Speaker 1: Greek poet Pindar, who was writing in the early fifth
Speaker 1: century b c. E uh and so to quote from
Speaker 1: Kunliffe here describing the pillars of Heracles, situated at the
Speaker 1: western extremity of the known world, far from home, he advises, quote,
Speaker 1: what lies beyond cannot be trodden by the wise or
Speaker 1: the unwise. One cannot cross from Ghadeer towards the dark west.
Speaker 1: Turn again the sails towards the dry land of Europe.
Speaker 1: The dark west. Yeah, I mean this vast, stormy ocean.
Speaker 1: You you don't know, if you know you travel out
Speaker 1: on it, Like would would you even reach land if
Speaker 1: you kept sailing? I mean it was not known. However,
Speaker 1: kun Of writes that Phoenician sailors were more adventurous in
Speaker 1: general in pushing westward uh And about around the year
Speaker 1: six hundred b C. A Phoenician expedition sponsored by the
Speaker 1: pharaoh Necho the second had been reported to have circumnavigated Africa.
Speaker 1: And though we don't have the original sources for the
Speaker 1: account that I'm about to describe, there are later Roman
Speaker 1: quotations of the accounts of Phoenician sailors possibly pushing further
Speaker 1: west into the Atlantic in exploration. And one of these
Speaker 1: notable sailors was a Carthaginian navigator named him Ilco. That's
Speaker 1: h I m I l c O, who lived probably
Speaker 1: sometime in the fifth century b c. E. Now, the
Speaker 1: Carthaginians were an ancient civilization that was based along the
Speaker 1: coast of North Africa. I think their their capital was
Speaker 1: in modern day Tunisia. But who expanded too much of
Speaker 1: the ancient Mediterranean. And then here I'm going to read
Speaker 1: from Cunliffe as he introduces and quotes another ancient source
Speaker 1: for for knowledge about Himilco. So Himilco quote, whose report
Speaker 1: published long ago in the secret Annals of the Carthaginians,
Speaker 1: is selectively quoted in a grossly pretentious poem compiled by
Speaker 1: our Roman administrator Rufus Festus Aviennas in the fourth century
Speaker 1: a d. A few lines of his Aura maritima will
Speaker 1: suffice to give the flavor. And then this quotes lines
Speaker 1: three seventy four. To the west of these pillars, Himilco
Speaker 1: reports that the swell is boundless, the sea extends widely
Speaker 1: the salt water streaks. Fourth, no one has approached these waters.
Speaker 1: No one has brought his keel into that sea, because
Speaker 1: there are no propelling breezes at sea, and no breath
Speaker 1: of Heaven's air aids the ship. Hence, because the mist
Speaker 1: cloaks the air with a kind of garment, a cloud
Speaker 1: always holds the swell and persists throughout the humid day.
Speaker 1: And so that's describing possibly some of the becalmed area
Speaker 1: of the North Atlantic, with like within the Gyre region
Speaker 1: that we talked about before, you know, surrounded by the currents,
Speaker 1: but is very often very still in that middle area
Speaker 1: that overlaps with the Sargasso Sea. But then Cunliff goes
Speaker 1: on to describe further how Aviennas quotes from him Ilko
Speaker 1: to describe his voyage. Uh Cunlift writes Elsewhere he talks
Speaker 1: of monsters of the deep and beasts who swim amid
Speaker 1: the slow and sluggish crawling ships, and again great fear
Speaker 1: of monsters stalks the deep. When the wind falls, the
Speaker 1: sluggish liquid of the lazy sea is at a stand still,
Speaker 1: while thick seaweed often tops the sea, and the tide
Speaker 1: is hindered by the marshy rack. The marshy rack. Oh
Speaker 1: yeah um and Kunlaf also says Himilko was evidently not
Speaker 1: enamored of his encounter with the ocean. Perhaps perhaps his
Speaker 1: vessel was drawn south into the dull drums and reach
Speaker 1: the Sargasso Sea, as some commentators have suggested, or perhaps
Speaker 1: he reported in this dispiriting way simply to aggrandize his
Speaker 1: own achievement and to deter others. Another possibility is that
Speaker 1: his original report was embroidered by Aviennus Uh. So we
Speaker 1: don't know exactly what he's describing here and if what
Speaker 1: he's describing is real, especially since we're only getting it
Speaker 1: quoted by a secondary source and we don't have the
Speaker 1: original source. But of course it is true. There's the
Speaker 1: danger of the dull drums, the calm part of the
Speaker 1: Atlantic where you won't have winds to propel your your sales. Uh,
Speaker 1: so you can very well get trapped there. That could
Speaker 1: well overlap with large stretches of seaweed, the sargassum seaweed
Speaker 1: that you would find in the Sargasso Sea. So one
Speaker 1: possible interpretation of what we're getting here is that this
Speaker 1: ancient Carthaginian sailor him Ilco actually sailed to the Sargasso Sea, survived,
Speaker 1: returned to Carthage eventually, and you know, lived to tell
Speaker 1: the tale. But again it's worth stressing that modern some
Speaker 1: modern scholars are are doubtful. It's hard to know for sure,
Speaker 1: but some details line up if they're accurate. You've got
Speaker 1: these reports about the marshy rack of seaweed coinciding with
Speaker 1: the Doldrums. It it lines up in a kind of
Speaker 1: interesting way. And then finally, of course, the mention of
Speaker 1: sea monsters right the I wonder if it's possible to
Speaker 1: mistake the shadow of a huge floating raft of sargassum
Speaker 1: for a sea monster stalking the deep. Again, I don't know,
Speaker 1: but it strikes me as possible. Yeah. Yeah, And well,
Speaker 1: once you get into discussing sea monsters, of course, as
Speaker 1: we've we've explored in the show before, especially looking at
Speaker 1: the work of the check ven Douser. Yeah, right on
Speaker 1: sea monsters. I believe he pointed out in his book
Speaker 1: that you know, at times sea monsters are a manifestation
Speaker 1: of uh certainly of of second and third hand accounts
Speaker 1: of of actual organisms. Other times their products of the mind,
Speaker 1: sometimes their products of of economic or political forces. So
Speaker 1: they're the whole host of reasons uh to to speak
Speaker 1: the word of the name of the sea monster. But
Speaker 1: that's certainly the yeah, the doldrums that seemed to be
Speaker 1: described here, and then the uh, the the rack, the muck,
Speaker 1: the seaweed here this does sound a lot like the
Speaker 1: descriptions modern descriptions of the sargassoc. Oh. And sorry, there's
Speaker 1: one thing I didn't clarify, but just to avoid confusion,
Speaker 1: because it's not a common word, I had to look
Speaker 1: this up. Rack here in this quotation is spelled with
Speaker 1: the W W R A C K, And I was like,
Speaker 1: what is that referring to? Is that like referring to
Speaker 1: like a like a shipwreck, because rack sometimes is an
Speaker 1: alternate spelling of rack or wreckage. But also I looked
Speaker 1: it up and apparently. It is also just a word
Speaker 1: sometimes used to refer to a massive seaweed like green vegetation.
Speaker 1: Could be oh, there is a rack with the W. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: well sometimes it U. I wasn't familiar with the precise definition,
Speaker 1: but I totally understood it in the context of the sentence.
Speaker 1: It's like, look at this rack, there's no getting through it.
Speaker 1: So so certainly you can imagine that the rack would
Speaker 1: not be a great place to find yourself as a
Speaker 1: human sailor, certainly in in ancient times. But of course
Speaker 1: the Iraq is home to a great many organisms, as
Speaker 1: we've already alluded to here. So uh for one thing,
Speaker 1: you have you have various um micro and macro um epiphytes.
Speaker 1: These are organisms that grow on the surface of a
Speaker 1: plant and derived derives its moisture and nutrients from the air, rain,
Speaker 1: and water. Uh. So you have that's those sorts of
Speaker 1: organisms growing there. You have fung gi. You have more
Speaker 1: than a hundred species of invertebrates that are known to
Speaker 1: uh to to live within the sargassum, over a hundred
Speaker 1: species of fish, four species of turtle. Again, and it
Speaker 1: kind of spirals out because once you have a certain
Speaker 1: amount of of life, uh, fostered within the sargassum, it's
Speaker 1: going to attract other things as well, so you'll see
Speaker 1: things like sharks showing up, etcetera. So we are not
Speaker 1: going to attempt to cover everything that lives in the sargassum,
Speaker 1: but we are going to talk about some of the standouts,
Speaker 1: because there are some really fun, really interesting, really weird
Speaker 1: organisms that call the rack home in the first of
Speaker 1: which I want to talk about is the sargassum fish,
Speaker 1: also known as the sargassum frog fish. Now, is this
Speaker 1: the one that you lured me into this episode with?
Speaker 1: Because the first thing that I became aware of when
Speaker 1: you were getting interested in sargassum was was that you
Speaker 1: came to me and you said, Joe, there is a
Speaker 1: fish with hands. Yes, yes, this would be uh, this
Speaker 1: would be the sargassum frog fish. Um and uh and
Speaker 1: and I'll and I'll explain what I mean by by hands.
Speaker 1: And they're not quite hands, but they are enough like
Speaker 1: hands that you're committed to get excited um and uh
Speaker 1: and yeah, it's probably the most famous sargas some denizen.
Speaker 1: It's the species history of history o frog fish of
Speaker 1: the family Uh. At Tinninara day and it's the only
Speaker 1: species of its genus. So, uh, we'll describe them here,
Speaker 1: but also feel free to look up images or video.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's nothing quite like seeing video of these uh,
Speaker 1: these creatures. I think there's some wonderful national geographic footage.
Speaker 1: But also the Weird House Cinema selection for tomorrow also
Speaker 1: will feature some actual footage of this creature right at
Speaker 1: the top. Um So, the uh, the sargassum fish grows
Speaker 1: to around twenty centimeters in lengths, so about seven point
Speaker 1: eight inches. And I should I guess I should say,
Speaker 1: first of all, they generally have this appearance that you'll
Speaker 1: find with other frog fish um and uh and and
Speaker 1: they're related to uh to the angler fish of the deep. Uh.
Speaker 1: So they have these upturned mouths, which kind of give
Speaker 1: them kind of this uh, the frowny face, look, this
Speaker 1: kind of froggy appearance and uh and and so that
Speaker 1: that's the first thing to drive home about them. So
Speaker 1: they have that that kind of body that I think
Speaker 1: at number of you can can imagine, but they sometimes
Speaker 1: sort of think of it as the drawbridge jaw. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: that's a good way of describing a drawbridge jaw, and
Speaker 1: of course, like like pretty much all fish, you know,
Speaker 1: they're they're going to consume by by lunging and inhaling,
Speaker 1: you know, pulling their their prey rapidly into their mouth.
Speaker 1: Um their masters. These particular fish, though, uh, the sargassom
Speaker 1: fish are masters of camouflage, at least within the sargassum environment,
Speaker 1: because they've adapted to physically look like the sargassum, complete
Speaker 1: with fleshy appendages that look like weed. I've seen some
Speaker 1: of the some of the appendages have even been compared
Speaker 1: to organisms that live within the weed um. So they
Speaker 1: just they just they look like they're just a part
Speaker 1: of the environment. You'll see images or even footage sometimes
Speaker 1: of the sargassum fish hiding in the seaweed and you
Speaker 1: really cannot pick them out with a human eye. I
Speaker 1: think at some point I watched a documentary or part
Speaker 1: of a documentary that had some of these in it,
Speaker 1: and it was one of those like you know, trick
Speaker 1: shots where they show you the shot and then it's
Speaker 1: like there are three sargassum fish in the shot, you
Speaker 1: can't see them at all, and then has to like
Speaker 1: circle them or zoom in on them or something. I
Speaker 1: think I've seen the same one. Yeah. Um. But of
Speaker 1: course it's not just their physical structure and initial coloration.
Speaker 1: The other cool thing about them is they can further
Speaker 1: adjust their coloration from dark browns and greens to light
Speaker 1: browns and greens to complete the illusion, to to fine
Speaker 1: tune it so that they blend in you know, seemingly completely. Um.
Speaker 1: And they can do this quite rapidly as well. This
Speaker 1: is important for the sargassum fish because again it is
Speaker 1: a voracious hunter, but also it's the jungle baby, so
Speaker 1: you know they're they're also they also have to be
Speaker 1: on guard against other predators, so it also helps protect them.
Speaker 1: Now they let's get to the hands, so if you will,
Speaker 1: uh so their pants, their pelvic fins uh, you know
Speaker 1: the fins up front. They have nine to eleven rays
Speaker 1: uh in them and they're stalked, essentially forming what act
Speaker 1: like clause. Basically, they can use these things again they
Speaker 1: look like clause, they look like fish clause, and they
Speaker 1: can use these to grip objects, and they use these
Speaker 1: to clamber over and through the seaweed. Okay, so they
Speaker 1: can use them to grip objects, not in the sense
Speaker 1: of like like our fingers where you would manipulate objects freely.
Speaker 1: But they can grip things in the sense of like
Speaker 1: sort of pushing against surfaces. Right. Yeah, they're not gonna
Speaker 1: be able to use an iPhone, they can't play the
Speaker 1: piano worth of dying, but but they can use these appendages.
Speaker 1: You have to sort of grip and push through things,
Speaker 1: which is gonna be vitally important when you're hanging out
Speaker 1: in the sargassum like little gravoid spines. Yeah, so they're
Speaker 1: really cool. Definitely look up. I mean they're beyond cool.
Speaker 1: They're a little creepy looking. I highly recommended checking them out. Um. So, so,
Speaker 1: obviously the adults live in the mats and their eggs
Speaker 1: are placed there as well, but the larvae develop in
Speaker 1: the water columns between fifty and six deep um. And
Speaker 1: you might think, well that, I guess the sargassum environment
Speaker 1: then is just no place for for kids, right um.
Speaker 1: And this is certainly the case, especially since the sargassum
Speaker 1: fish is more than happy to eat them as well.
Speaker 1: So they're in They're not only incredibly voracious, but their
Speaker 1: notorious cannibals. I was reading about some of the studies
Speaker 1: where they've they've caught sargassum fish and they've they've looked
Speaker 1: inside at their bellies and they'll find like multiple juveniles.
Speaker 1: You know, they'll find some juveniles and they just they'll
Speaker 1: just just gobble them up delicious. Yeah. So again, just
Speaker 1: a fabulous fish. Just it's everything about it is uh
Speaker 1: is both beautiful and frightening, uh in just the right proportions. Now,
Speaker 1: they're not the only creature that that that lives are again,
Speaker 1: and they're not the only creature that that takes a
Speaker 1: sargassum as part of its uh you know, official or
Speaker 1: unofficial name. For instance, there's the sargassum pipe fish. This
Speaker 1: is a species of pipe fish that makes its home
Speaker 1: in the sargassum mats uh. And like all pipe fish
Speaker 1: and seahorses, the male carries the egg. Um. They're just
Speaker 1: into these elongated um, you know, beautiful fish with that
Speaker 1: kind of signature, uh seahorsey head now. Um. Just briefly
Speaker 1: a couple of other organisms. Well, first, in general should
Speaker 1: say that that the Sargasso Sea in particular is a
Speaker 1: spawning site for various eels, uh, including threatened and endangered eels.
Speaker 1: But speaking of decapods, there is also worth our consideration.
Speaker 1: The sargassum swimming crab or U Portunists say, I, uh,
Speaker 1: this is uh just one variety of crab you'll find
Speaker 1: in sargassum mats, but it's an impressive one and a
Speaker 1: species adapted to blend into the environment. They have an
Speaker 1: orange brown colorization that apparently matches up with the sargassum
Speaker 1: pretty well. And as the name implies, they're more adapted
Speaker 1: for swimming than walking. U. The fourth pair of legs
Speaker 1: are modified into paddle like structures. Now, crabs, of of course,
Speaker 1: are noted for walking sideways, so you might wonder how
Speaker 1: does it swim. Well, they tend to swim sideways as well. Uh,
Speaker 1: and apparently they're quite fast. They depend on a mix
Speaker 1: of active and passive hunting, so they'll they'll actively chase
Speaker 1: after something again sideways uh to catch it, but they'll
Speaker 1: also fall back on that that sort of ambush hunting
Speaker 1: within the jungle of the sargassum. Yeah. Now, in addition
Speaker 1: to these organisms that spend all or most of their
Speaker 1: lives in the sargassum, there are also organisms that use
Speaker 1: sargassum as a sort of like a stepping stone during
Speaker 1: their migration patterns. One example that's often referenced would be
Speaker 1: young sea turtles. Yeah, and I've also heard that it's
Speaker 1: important to even like migratory birds for species. Again, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's an oasis in the wastes, an oasis in
Speaker 1: the desert of the sea. Thank thank so. Now, earlier
Speaker 1: we we alluded to the sargassum being not not only
Speaker 1: this this bountiful environment, but also potentially a problem, a
Speaker 1: problem for humans and the sort of human likes and
Speaker 1: dislikes concerning beaches, but also just for the environment as
Speaker 1: a whole. As the Ocean Foundation points out, it's ecologically
Speaker 1: important the sargassum, but it doesn't mean it doesn't have
Speaker 1: some downsides, especially when you're dealing with large volumes. Right,
Speaker 1: And this is something that's become especially a problem within
Speaker 1: just the last decade or so. Actually, it can really
Speaker 1: be dated to a year in particular from what from
Speaker 1: everything we've been reading for the year two thousand eleven.
Speaker 1: Starting around two thousand eleven, something started happening with sargass
Speaker 1: them in the Atlantic Ocean where there was a sudden
Speaker 1: increase that has gone on in many years since then,
Speaker 1: of of sargassum inundations where beaches and shore lines along
Speaker 1: areas in the Caribbean, along the coast of Florida, along
Speaker 1: places in the coast of the northern coast of South
Speaker 1: America would just be caked with sargassum, like they're just
Speaker 1: mounds and mounds of seaweed piling up to the point
Speaker 1: that it in some cases would make these shores unusable
Speaker 1: for what humans have been using them for, usually in
Speaker 1: in the years beforehand. Yeah, if if any of you
Speaker 1: out there are are snorkelers, or are you know, related
Speaker 1: to our friends with snorkeling enthusiasts, then you've you've probably
Speaker 1: heard about the blight of sargassum, about the disappointment of off, say,
Speaker 1: you know, reaching a popular snorkeling area and finding that
Speaker 1: there's just sargassum everywhere, um, you know. So it's in
Speaker 1: particular one of the things that the Ocean Foundation points out,
Speaker 1: huge rafts of it can actually smother other sea grasses
Speaker 1: and even coral reefs. Um. You know. Granted, coral reefs
Speaker 1: are facing uh a number of problems, um, you know,
Speaker 1: and are and uh and we've gone into that in
Speaker 1: past episodes. But but certainly this could disrupt your ability
Speaker 1: to even properly view them as a as a tourist
Speaker 1: in the ocean, as a as a snorkeler, um, you know,
Speaker 1: out there trying to to observe this natural habitat. Uh
Speaker 1: it can also this is interesting this this has brought
Speaker 1: up as well. Apparently sargassum can serve as a means
Speaker 1: of transport for invasive species. Though UM, I honestly wonder
Speaker 1: if this at all compares to human enabled invasive species transport.
Speaker 1: It seems like, um it almost wouldn't matter compared to
Speaker 1: what humans can and have done. Uh you know, importing
Speaker 1: species like the lion fish into regions that um, that
Speaker 1: that are not balanced enough to to contain them. Well, yes,
Speaker 1: but I would also say that there I think there
Speaker 1: is at least a strong likelihood that human behavior is
Speaker 1: a major contributor to these these new build ups of
Speaker 1: sargassum in the last Yeah, and we'll and we'll get
Speaker 1: into into more of that in just a second. Um,
Speaker 1: just a few more points here that the Ocean Foundation
Speaker 1: made Uh. Sargassum of course can prevent boats and fishermen
Speaker 1: from setting out to sea. It can also prevent sea
Speaker 1: turtles from making it to nest in these cases as well.
Speaker 1: So you know, again you have it massing up on
Speaker 1: the beach. In particular, if it's um, you know, a
Speaker 1: certain amount of that is arguably good for the beach,
Speaker 1: but if you have too much of it, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: gonna actually interfere potentially in a sea turtle's ability to
Speaker 1: come on shore lady eggs and then have the hatchlings
Speaker 1: be able to properly get back out to sea again
Speaker 1: in in an appropriate amount of time. And if it
Speaker 1: masses on the beach, the sargassum it, if it's not
Speaker 1: removed in time, it can produce hydrogen sulfide, which can
Speaker 1: have a made your can have major detrimental effects on
Speaker 1: coastal ecosystems. Yeah, I mean, it can have all kinds
Speaker 1: of negative effects on the wildlife itself. I mean, one
Speaker 1: would be like if it doesn't reach the beach, if
Speaker 1: you're just talking about it still being in the water.
Speaker 1: Big blooms of algal organisms in the water can have
Speaker 1: downstream effects when the blooms eventually die and then there's
Speaker 1: all of this dead, decomposing material in the water, and
Speaker 1: then the decomposition of that material ends up robbing the
Speaker 1: water of dissolved oxygen, which in turn leads to these
Speaker 1: big fish die offs and die offs of other organisms
Speaker 1: because there's not enough oxygen in the water for them
Speaker 1: to breathe. Yeah, and also all that decomposition in the
Speaker 1: water can promote harmful blooms of bacteria and other microbes.
Speaker 1: I guess the way to to to think of it
Speaker 1: is it's basically like spiraling imbalance in the ecosystem. And
Speaker 1: uh and and uh it's it's place in this. This
Speaker 1: this the cascade of imbalance. Now to get kind of
Speaker 1: a I guess sort of a bird's eye or I
Speaker 1: guess satellite view of things. Um. I found this pretty helpful.
Speaker 1: I was looking at a July twenty nineteen article from
Speaker 1: NASA Goddard. They utilize the satellite images to observe the
Speaker 1: Great Atlantic Sargassum belt. Uh so at this point, based
Speaker 1: on simulations, they confirmed that its shape was due to
Speaker 1: ocean currents and that it can grow large enough so
Speaker 1: as to blanket the surface of the Tropical Atlantic from
Speaker 1: the west coast of Africa to the Gulf of Mexico.
Speaker 1: Major blooms have occurred in every year between twenty eleven
Speaker 1: and again this was a July articles, so that's as
Speaker 1: far up as it went at the time. UH, with
Speaker 1: the exception of which this was apparently UH this year
Speaker 1: was impacted by unusually low seed populations during the winter,
Speaker 1: but otherwise eleven onward, it's been sargassum season. Prior to
Speaker 1: most of the free floating sargassum in the ocean was
Speaker 1: primarily found in patches around the Gulf of Mexico and
Speaker 1: the Sargasso Sea. But then something changed, something seemingly in
Speaker 1: the biochemistry the ocean. Obviously, you know, people were asking
Speaker 1: a lot of questions about climate change UH and and
Speaker 1: ultimately I guess the reality is is complicated, but basically yes,
Speaker 1: it's pointed out by a doctor Paula Bontempi of NASA's
Speaker 1: Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry Program, the ocean's biochemistry is changing
Speaker 1: due to a mix of natural and human forces, and
Speaker 1: it seems to be leading to an ecosystem shift with
Speaker 1: important implications for marine life and human life. Since we
Speaker 1: depend on many of the species in question and live
Speaker 1: in in in many of the environments that are impacted. UH.
Speaker 1: Climate change is certainly a key aspect of this as
Speaker 1: it impacts precipitation and ocean circulation, but increased water temperatures
Speaker 1: typically don't seem to be the cause. It's these other causes.
Speaker 1: But again, uh, climate change is very much part of
Speaker 1: the issue. I don't want to make it sound like
Speaker 1: it's not. Yeah, if you were. If you want to
Speaker 1: read more in depth about this research, there's a really
Speaker 1: good article in The Atlantic by Ed Young from July
Speaker 1: nineteen called hy waves of seaweed have been smothering Caribbean beaches. Again,
Speaker 1: this from July nineteen by Ed Young. Uh, that's worth
Speaker 1: looking up, and it gets into a lot of the
Speaker 1: difficulty and uncertainty in trying to figure out exactly what
Speaker 1: the underlying factors leading to this change that we first
Speaker 1: saw in the year two thousand eleven was establishing this
Speaker 1: this huge belt of sargassum that was not there previously.
Speaker 1: And what we want to be very clear, this Atlantic
Speaker 1: sargassum belt is different from the sargassum in the Sargasso Sea.
Speaker 1: The Sargasso Sea is further north in the North Atlantic
Speaker 1: off the east coast of of like the United States,
Speaker 1: whereas this would be something that stretches more between Brazil
Speaker 1: and Africa. In fact, one of the things that Ed
Speaker 1: Young writes about in this article was the very idea
Speaker 1: of the satellite photos that you were talking about that
Speaker 1: one of the fortunate things for studying sargassum blooms on
Speaker 1: the large scale is that sargassum reflects more infrared light
Speaker 1: than the seawater around it, So when you look down
Speaker 1: with satellites, sargassum patches can appear as hot spots in
Speaker 1: the ocean that can be seen from space. Young sites, Uh,
Speaker 1: the researcher named Jim Gower of the Fisheries and Oceans
Speaker 1: Canada for for doing this satellite research. But yeah, the
Speaker 1: the satellite photos found that the bloom really began in
Speaker 1: April of two thousand eleven, which correlates with you know
Speaker 1: these times when these pile ups on the beaches, the
Speaker 1: sargassum inundations really started becoming a problem that people noticed.
Speaker 1: But they started noticing the blooms off the coast of
Speaker 1: Brazil in the satellite images from two thousand eleven. And
Speaker 1: then Young also points to research by someone named Ming
Speaker 1: Chi Wang from the University of South Florida who, along
Speaker 1: with her colleagues, they've basically established that, yeah, this bloom
Speaker 1: is just going to be an ongoing yearly thing now,
Speaker 1: uh that that it's coming and it's probably not going
Speaker 1: to stop. Though. One of the interesting things this article
Speaker 1: gets into is a delay between the proximate causes that
Speaker 1: are likely leading to the blooms and then when the
Speaker 1: blooms show up within you know, what we can see
Speaker 1: with our satellites or what's piling up on our beaches.
Speaker 1: Because a couple of the factors that have been identified
Speaker 1: as likely candidates leading to these blooms. One is um
Speaker 1: is water being discharged from the Amazon River. You know,
Speaker 1: it's coming out of South America. UM. And this water
Speaker 1: coming out of the Amazon River is probably being especially
Speaker 1: saturated with nutrients from agriculture that's happening all along the
Speaker 1: Amazon basin, and so this is like it's like for
Speaker 1: fertilizer that is flooding into the ocean, and then of
Speaker 1: course that is feeding blooms of of this macro algae.
Speaker 1: And then there are other factors they get into that
Speaker 1: are probably contributing, such as like what the different temperatures
Speaker 1: are this year. It's the same thing you were talking
Speaker 1: about that um that climate change doesn't seem to be
Speaker 1: the cause of it in the sense of increasing ocean
Speaker 1: temperatures lead to uh, lead to macro alogy blooms, because
Speaker 1: that doesn't appear to be the case, but downstream other
Speaker 1: effects of climate change are very likely contributing to this.
Speaker 1: It's just not the temperature of the water itself. Another
Speaker 1: factor that they're talking about is access to the seed
Speaker 1: populations of of seaweed. It's like, how many patches of
Speaker 1: seaweed are there leftover that survived the winter of the
Speaker 1: previous year and can act as a kind of seed
Speaker 1: for the regrowth of the seaweed every new season. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I think it kind of brings back that that
Speaker 1: point about the neumaticis having a like a year lifespan,
Speaker 1: so there's gonna be a certain amount of crossover as
Speaker 1: well here from one year to the next. Um. I
Speaker 1: was impressed one of the quotes you pulled from from
Speaker 1: the eight young article just about how many tons of
Speaker 1: seaweed we're talking about here? Yeah, yeah, yeah, So the estimate,
Speaker 1: I think this would be referring to the year previous
Speaker 1: to when this article was written, So it was published
Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen, so I think this would be referring
Speaker 1: to the summer of eighteen during June, when the Sargassin
Speaker 1: Belt was at at its most fruitful, it was estimated
Speaker 1: to contain twenty two million tons of seaweed. And then
Speaker 1: there's even a clarification later in the article that that
Speaker 1: estimate is probably low since the resolution of the satellite
Speaker 1: camera that's taking the infrared imagery to establish that number,
Speaker 1: it has like a minimum sort of pixel distance resolution,
Speaker 1: so it can only see patches that show up at
Speaker 1: a minimum resolution of something like a kilometer. I think
Speaker 1: it was. It could be long about that. Uh, doing
Speaker 1: that just stuff memory, but I think that's what it was.
Speaker 1: And uh. And so like patches that are smaller than that,
Speaker 1: with which there are probably plenty, they're not even really
Speaker 1: showing up on the imaging. So that's a lot of seaweed.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of seaweed, folks, And there's a lot
Speaker 1: and that's ending up on a lot of it's ending
Speaker 1: up on the shores eventually. But one thing that is
Speaker 1: worth stressing again is that while researchers have probably identified
Speaker 1: some very good candidates for the explanations of of these
Speaker 1: blooms and inundations of sargassum in the last decade or so.
Speaker 1: There's still some uncertainty. There's like stuff we don't know
Speaker 1: about what what could be leading to it and what
Speaker 1: could be the limiting and contributing factors. Anyway, that the
Speaker 1: article by ed Young is a really good read. You
Speaker 1: should look it up. Yeah, absolutely, I recommend that one. Now.
Speaker 1: You know, in the past, I think it's been brought
Speaker 1: up when we're dealing with invasive species or species that
Speaker 1: are out of balance, one of the best things that
Speaker 1: you can do is develop an appetite for that species,
Speaker 1: uh in human being. Now, I don't I don't think
Speaker 1: anybody's making an argument that that could um make a
Speaker 1: difference with the sargassum. But it is again worth noting
Speaker 1: that sargassum is something that humans can eat. Uh. We
Speaker 1: we mentioned that already, and I found a wonderful blog
Speaker 1: titled Eat the Weeds with Green Dean. Um. So his
Speaker 1: name is Dean, but he's Green Dean. Get it and
Speaker 1: the blogs. The blog is titled Sargassum Sea Vegetable And
Speaker 1: in this post, Green Dean points to a few different
Speaker 1: culinary traditions that have recipes for sargassum. Uh. Though he
Speaker 1: points out that given the different species. Basically, it's sargassum
Speaker 1: is going to quote very in taste and texture, So
Speaker 1: there is no one way to cook your local species. Uh.
Speaker 1: He says that some amount of experimentation is going to
Speaker 1: be required, but basically he goes through different cuisines in
Speaker 1: this post, points out that sometimes it's consumed fresh. Other
Speaker 1: times it's cooked, saying coconut milk or vinegar or lemon juice.
Speaker 1: Other Times it's smoke dried, or it's boiled. Sometimes it's
Speaker 1: even sweetened and put into steam buns. Sometimes it's cooked
Speaker 1: with fish. Basically, they're just numerous ways to approach it,
Speaker 1: but it's it's worth checking out. The link I recommended
Speaker 1: it said, eat the weeds dot com you'll find a
Speaker 1: post on the sargasm sea vegetable. Um. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: I've ever had sargassum in a dish. Maybe I have
Speaker 1: and I just wasn't alert to it, But now I
Speaker 1: feel like I really, I really want to have it.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I have either. I mean, I've
Speaker 1: had a number of seaweed salads, but I don't know
Speaker 1: what species were in them. Yeah, well, I know some
Speaker 1: basic things. I mean, I know like combo and combo,
Speaker 1: of course, is a seaweed based food additive that is
Speaker 1: an amazing source of umami flavor. It's it's it's almost
Speaker 1: like raw msg. It's that it's good stuff um But
Speaker 1: but yeah, other than that, I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've had I've had like various seaweed salads at Japanese
Speaker 1: restaurants that have had different types of seaweeds, some that
Speaker 1: looked kind of like orange around, like like some species
Speaker 1: of sargassum do So maybe I have I don't know. Huh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I've I've only I know of at least
Speaker 1: one time, had like a sampler of seaweed salads from
Speaker 1: the Japanese restaurant. But in those cases, I think they
Speaker 1: were all still rather green. They didn't have um any
Speaker 1: kind of darker coloration. So I don't know. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: look for it now now it is on it is
Speaker 1: it is something I want to specifically try out, knowing
Speaker 1: that it is sargassum. I just looked it up to
Speaker 1: make sure. I I thought that combo was not sargassum,
Speaker 1: and it is not. Comb is a type of kelp. Well, obviously,
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear from everyone out there about this
Speaker 1: topic in general, but but specifically on this question of
Speaker 1: the cooking and the consumption of sargassum. If you've if
Speaker 1: you you definitely know you've had it, and you've had
Speaker 1: in a particular way that was yummy or or or
Speaker 1: or not yummy, let us know we would love to
Speaker 1: hear from you, and likewise, just in you know, in general,
Speaker 1: any feedback about about the various organisms we've discussed here
Speaker 1: surrounding sar assam or uh sargassom, seaweed itself. Perhaps you're
Speaker 1: a snorkeler and have your you know, two cents you
Speaker 1: want to throw in, uh right in, we'd like to
Speaker 1: hear from you. In the meantime, if you would like
Speaker 1: to hear other episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind,
Speaker 1: you can find us in the Stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind podcast feed and you know where to find that
Speaker 1: just wherever you get podcasts UM subscribe if you can
Speaker 1: rate us, if the platform allows you to um, you
Speaker 1: know it gives us. I guess a good rating is
Speaker 1: what we're asking for. You know, that supposedly helps us out,
Speaker 1: But in general, we're just thankful if you're if you're
Speaker 1: listening to the show and uh, you know right in.
Speaker 1: Let us know what you like about the show, what
Speaker 1: what you would like to hear from us in the future,
Speaker 1: what other topics you would like us to consider. Yes, absolutely,
Speaker 1: uh so, I guess we're closing out here, so huge
Speaker 1: thanks as always to our wonderful audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us,
Speaker 1: as as Rob just asked there, to let us know
Speaker 1: feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a
Speaker 1: topic for a future episode, or just to say hi,
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
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