The University of South Florida has received a $3.2 million grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The grant goes to a team of researchers studying how to improve sargassum bloom forecasting technology to prevent damage to coastal communities. The money will be distributed throughout the next five years.
Sargassum is a brown algae that is abundant in the ocean, according to NOAA. The amount of sargassum in the ocean has increased every year since 2011 and has become a concern as massive floating algae blooms in the Atlantic Ocean, like the 5,000-mile and 13-million-ton “behemoth” found in April, wash onshore.
The research team has studied and tracked the algae for several years at USF’s College of Marine Science. Brian Barnes, the project’s principal investigator and an assistant research professor, and a team of more than 10 other academics and involved members have tracked and studied sargassum since 2015. It uses satellite, hydrographic and water-quality data to study the effects of sargassum on coastal and improve forecasting technologies. The goal now is to increase the scale of the scientific monitoring for various reasons, according to a release.
The new monitoring system will allow researchers to observe smaller patches of sargassum in the ocean and issue warnings if needed.
“The goal is to be able to put a single beach on alert when a sargassum inundation is imminent, instead of alerting the entire Caribbean,” Barnes said in a statement.
The sargassum algae has economic and biological effects on areas where it washes up. After washing up on the beach, decomposing sargassum can emit dangerous gases, including hydrogen sulfide. The gas can affect human health and the ecological health nearby. The sargassum can also cause hypoxia, a depletion of oxygen that can kill fish.
The grant will also help better understand sargassum’s biochemical influence on coastal ecosystems, and the increased sargassum monitoring will give coastal resource managers more time to prepare for inundation, according to the release.
Chuanmin Hu is a professor on the oceanography research team and author of the paper finding the increased amount of sargassum. He told Tampa Bay Inno that sargassum could turn people away from visiting beaches because of the odor and unattractive sight of the piles of sargassum. The research should eventually help.
“This is similar to launching hundreds or even thousands of drones and them flying over and around the beaches to keep an eye and to monitor what’s going on, but this is all from satellites,” Hu said.
