Unwilling to believe his eyes, he talked to other oceanographers, who confirmed that there was a huge sargassum bloom in the South Atlantic. Oceanographer Ajit Subramaniam on a research expedition. “One moment we were in the blue sea, then bam! It was all around the ship for tens, hundreds of metres.” “Here was something I’d never seen before,” he says. Oceanographer Ajit Subramaniam, who has run scientific research expeditions in the South Atlantic for 25 years, first noticed it in 2018. What is alarming, is the rate at which it is growing. Under the surface it teems with life, like an upside-down reef. But even early witnesses recognised its value: it provides a safe harbour and breeding ground for fish, turtles and other marine life. Distinguished by bubble-like formations in its stems that keep it floating on the surface, pelagic sargassum has sloshed about in the Atlantic since well before Christopher Columbus sailed across the wide Sargasso Sea: in 1492, he wrote that he feared his boat would be trapped in it. It is beautiful, layered like golden mats on the surface of the open ocean. Sargassum floating on the waters of Guadeloupe in the Caribbean.
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