May 31, 2022 • 56 mins
In this classic episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe explore the sargassum seaweed and the many strange and amazing organisms that call it home. (originally published 4/29/2021)
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This is
Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're actually
bringing you a vault episode to help get us through
some some people being out of office here and there
over the next couple of weeks. So today's episode originally
published April nine, and it was on the Sargassum Seaweed.
(00:25):
That's right. This is the fun episode, full of fantastic
creatures in a wonderful environment and also a few allusions
to a movie we discussed on Weird How Cinema Z
also known as the Blood Waters of Dr Z. So
if you're interested in that Weird How Cinema episode, you'll
find that in the back catalog. Now, to lay things
out for you, I think we do have a fresh
(00:47):
original episode coming up for you on Thursday of this week.
Then we'll have a few more vaults for you the
week after that, But then we should be back with
all new things once again. Right, Welcome to Stuff to
Blow Your Mind, production of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome
(01:10):
to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert
Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're going to
go into the wettest of the woods, the saltiest of
the woods. Today the woods are salty, dark and deep.
And and we have promises to keep and miles to
float before we sleep, because we're going to be looking
at a sort of jungle in the ocean. That's right. Uh.
(01:33):
The ocean. Uh, it knows quite a mix of environments,
from rich coral reefs to desolate deep sea waste, from
sunlit shallows to hydrothermal vent heated depths. Marine organisms, of course,
face numerous challenges, but the most basic demands boiled down to,
you know, how not to end, how not to die,
how to prolong? It's era to quote waiting for the barbarians.
(01:59):
But this is especially of your small or your young organism.
You're gonna need food, and you're gonna need shelter. Uh,
And there's always going to be something trying to eat you.
And for a number of organisms, this is provided by Sargassum,
a genus of brown seaweed of sometimes brown, sometimes described
as brown and orange um as well. Discuss there a
(02:21):
number of different species here, but uh. Sargassum thrives abundantly
in the ocean. It floats free of the ocean floor
It provides a buoyant, free floating environment that travels on
the tides and offers food, refuge, breeding grounds, nurseries, hunting grounds,
et cetera for a wide variety of organisms. So in
(02:42):
this episode, we're going to discuss the sargassum organisms themselves,
the environment that they offer, some of its benefactors, and
also the problems posed by the so called Great Atlantic
sargassum Belt. Yeah, and that last point is interesting because
I will say, when you think of sea, do you
think of the macroalgy world, you don't usually think of
(03:03):
it as something that is particularly economically devastating or or
or even economically all that significant. But but that that
is not the case for sargassum. Yeah, as well. It's
it's it's an interesting topic to explore because in its
present form, it kind of cuts both ways. It's both
vitally important to uh to so many organisms and a
(03:25):
number of organisms that are then important to us, you know,
various um uh you know marine species that we depend on,
various fish and so forth. But then on the other hand, uh,
in an environment that is increasingly out of balance, uh,
it also poses a threat and it can pose quite
a nuisance, So we'll get into all that. So what
(03:46):
got you thinking about sargassum for today, Rob, Well, it's
because tomorrow's episode of Weird House Cinema will entail sargassum
and casual mention of a few of the creatures, one
creature in particular that calls it home. Um. Well, we'll
try to save all of that for tomorrow's episode. But
but yeah, that was probably the first place I heard
(04:08):
of sargassum, the Weed of deceit. I was wondering if
we should announce the movie, but maybe we should just
make everyone wait to find out if they're going to
be wondering, Wait, is it a Jaws clone where it's
a big raft of seaweed instead of a shark. Is
it like the Blair Witch Project, but instead of getting
lost in the woods of Virginia or wherever it is,
you get lost in the woods of the ocean of
(04:28):
the Sargasso Sea. Well that the truth will just suddenly
strike out at them and there'll be nothing they can
do about it. Uh So, So tune in tomorrow if
you wish for that. But but for this episode, we're
going to focus on first on on Sargassum. The the organism,
so sargassum glimpsed in the ocean or on the beach,
(04:50):
it might just look like a big heap of brown mess.
But about closer look you'll notice that it's composed of branches,
leafy bits, and what looked like plump berries. But they're
not berries, So don't don't pick them. Uh, I mean,
I guess you could pick them, But what they are
actually are newmaticists. These are air bubbles, um. Uh. They
(05:11):
are part of the organism held that you know, in
in these little cysts that help it excel at floating
around right. Because of course, there are different types of seaweed,
and some types of seaweed spend their life, you know,
submerged in the water, and they might be say, anchored
down by a type of organ known as a hold fast.
That is somewhat analogous to like the root ball of
(05:32):
a tree that holds it, except in the case of seaweed,
it would hold clumps of seaweed to the ocean floor.
Not entirely analogous, I mean, for many reasons, one of
which is that, uh, is that the seaweed that we're
talking about today is technically not even a plant. It
is a type of macroalgae, which will explain more about.
But in the case of sargassum, Uh, there are types
of sargassum that are free floating organisms that spend much
(05:56):
or all of their lives just floating on top of
the water to have good access to sunlight, of course,
which they need in order to make their food to survive.
But they've got to just sit there and float on
the top. And they're actually not even anchored to the
bottom at all. They just float out in the open ocean.
And I do just want to stress again that the
genus is Sargassum, and there I believe about a hundred
(06:17):
and fifty species um all sargassum. Uh. The hundred and
fifty number, I got that from the Ocean Foundation, though
curiously I saw some higher numbers out there as well.
I don't know if those were accurate. I'm sticking with
the one, right. So, there are different kinds that you'll find,
especially in different parts of the oceans around the world,
right Uh. And we'll be talking about some key ones though,
(06:38):
that are the most abundant, or at least in the
end of the part of the world that we're gonna
be discussing here. So, as I mentioned, sargassum is a
brown macroalgay, so it is different than plants. And how
exactly is it different than plants? Yeah? I think this
is also important to stress because if you don't think
much about seaweed, you might just you know, you know,
(06:59):
you might just as soon we all right, it's some
sort of plant that grows in the water. Um, And
I think that you might be reasonable to make that
assumption just based on its physical appearance, and certainly the
word seaweed um. Weeds are plants, yeah, yeah, And and
seaweed is also used informally a lot of times to
describe both the algae and some plant organisms. But the
(07:20):
algae are protests, meaning they are uh eukaryotic organisms, which
are not animals plants or fun gi um so land
plants for their part, they likely derived from fresh water
algae about five hundred million years ago. An algae is,
of course, when we look at the just the root
of the word um, they're synonymous with seaweed, as alga
(07:44):
is the Latin for seaweed. Okay, so if you if
you just think about algae like the most I would
say if I was to go on my own personal
life experience. When I hear the word algae by itself,
what I tend to think of is kind of green
pond scum, you know, kind of very like something floating
on top of a stagnant freshwater body like a pond
(08:08):
or a lake, that is made of tiny little fibers
that just kind of clumped together. Doesn't have any recognizable
macro structures the way larger plants like like flowers or
trees would. But that is not true of all kinds
of algae. These macro algaes that we see in these
types of seaweed, they have more complex structures that are
(08:29):
more like the structures of land plants. So they might
have something that is akin to the stalk of a
land plant and something that is akin to the leaves.
In these cases, they would be algal fronds. Yes, yeah,
so yeah again they look very plant like. You can
easily look at them and say, oh, they're will leave,
they're the berries. But uh, at any rate, again, a
hundred and fifty different species of sargassum uh, though we're
(08:54):
generally going to be talking about specific dominant species within
given regions. For instance, the two varieties found most often
in the Caribbean are Sargassum natan's and Sargassum fluitans um.
I don't think it would be necessary to remember that,
but just know that again, we're gonna we're probably gonna
refer to sargassum a lot, just generally, but we're gonna
(09:16):
ultimately be dealing with specific species that are dominant within
a given a region. So sargassum reproduces a sexually through fragmentation,
a form of a sexual reproduction in which parents split
into fragments and those fragments then become adults. And furthermore,
the Caribbean sargasm species in particular, and some of these
(09:36):
other varieties that are important are hollow pelagic. That means
that they not only float freely on the ocean, but
they also reproduce vegetatively on the high seas. So they're
they're completely in international waters, you know, they're they're they're
they're a monkey knife fight that the land has no
control over. So yeah, but that would mean that they
(09:59):
don't they can do their whole life cycle without like
anchoring to the bottom at any point or returning to
shore or anything like that. Right, And that's gonna that's
gonna becoming important later on. It get it really gets
in ultimately the idea of sargassum being the wheat of
the seed, so it grows abundantly in the ocean, where
it forms vast floating rafts, as it's sometimes called. Though um,
(10:21):
I don't think these are rafts in the sense that
you could, you know, be a shipwrecked sailor at sea
and climb on top of it or hoist a sail
on it. But essentially just big rafts, big floating chunks
of of the sargassum, all tingled together, stretching in some
cases for miles, and these form in areas of converging
surface currents u and in doing so they create a
(10:42):
vital environment, like we alluded to earlier. But on top
of the environment, the organism itself provides food. According to
the Ocean Foundation, sargassum contributes and estimated six of the
total primary production in the upper one meter of the
water column. Okay, so that would refer to like different
different stages of the food chain. So you've got the
(11:03):
primary producers that are familiar to us. These are generally
photosynthesizing organisms, like like plants on land, you know, that
absorbs sunlight to power the chemical reactions that make their bodies.
And then you've got the secondary uh, characters on the
food chain that eat the primary producers. You know that
that eat plants to survive, the same thing is true
in the ocean. So you've got these primary producers that
(11:25):
are at least near the top of the water column
are going to be basing their their energy cycle on
sunlight to to produce these molecules that make up their
body that that in turn are eaten by other organisms
that are the sort of the secondary organisms in that
food chain. Yeah, it's it's like you said at the
very beginning, this is the forest that we're discussing. Like
in a way, don't think of the ocean itself as
(11:47):
the forest. Think of the think of the sargassum. These
going to these rafts of sargassum as the forest. Because
the ocean, as we've discussed in the show before, the
ocean can be a wasteland. The ocean can be a
desert and um and in desert, the sargassum can be
the oasis um. It serves as a place of refuge
for various creatures as well as again breeding grounds nurseries.
(12:09):
In fact, it's the primary nursery for a number of
important to human to humans, especially fish species like the
Ma ma. And given all of this activity that's going
on at the various creatures that call it home, sometimes
exclusively uh, their home, it's also prime stalking zone for
many marine predators, So both sargasm predators who live there
and have evolved a thrive in its environment, but also
(12:32):
general marine apex predators that are drawn in by the by,
by the riches there by the biodiversity. Uh, let's see
if a few other just sort of general um facts
about sargassum. It can survive wide temperature and salinity variances,
and after about a year, those new maticists that help
it to remain buoyant, uh, they lose their buoyancy and
(12:55):
bits of sargassum will then sink to the sea floor,
where it will actually been up providing carbon for various
deep sea creatures. So it's not only an important energy
source for the sunlit shallow regions of the sea, but
for the dark depths as well. I guess, serving as
kind of like that that nutrient rainfall that we've talked
about before that rains upon the deep and indeed when
(13:16):
it washes up on the shore. Uh. I guess for
for the most part we're talking about it. If it's
washing up in manageable quantities, um, it can actually nourish beaches,
It can prevent sand from blowing away. Uh. And when
it washes up, it also serves as a food source
for various coastal species. Um. And not only is it
(13:37):
generally not harmful to humans, it's actually edible. More than that,
in a bit, uh, there are also possible biofuel and
pharmaceutical possibilities for sargassum um. We'll get into some of
the drawbacks later on, but but one of the interesting
things here is that like the idea of just sargassum
piling up on the beach again in manageable quality quant quantities,
it does bring to mind that sort of contest, that
(14:02):
disagreement at times over what constitutes the beach or what
the beach should look like. You know, should there be
anything on the beach other than um human strolling and
enjoying their vacation. You know, uh, you know some of
the some of the really beautiful beaches out there, a
lot of times they are manicured, you know, things like
seaweed are collected regularly in order to have that sort
(14:23):
of Hollywood beach presented. Uh. And in many cases there's
an argument to me, may then no debris would be
on the beach naturally, and it in the right quantities,
it can be important to keeping the sand from washing away,
keeping the beach from eroding, etcetera. I can see the
point of view that would say I'm okay with the
beach that has natural debris, but not unmanageable amounts of
(14:46):
natural debris or artificial debris. I mean you certainly you
know you don't want too many beer cans. That's going
to kind of ruin your beach experience. Yeah, nobody wants
to step on a beer can on the beach, but likewise,
nobody really wants to have to walk over a tin
foot high a mound of urgassum like dead, rotting seaweed.
Right right now, Um, we're gonna be getting into the
(15:06):
history of humanities awareness and understanding of sargassum uh here.
And the first bit I want to share is that
you know, certainly early sailors described sargassum mats, and one
individual in particular, Christopher Columbus UH This was in when
abundance sargassum fooled Columbus into thinking he was approaching land.
(15:30):
And I couldn't find anything that really defined this for me.
I don't know if you did, Joe, but I assume
this is what the term the weed of Deceit refers
to the idea that you might encounter sargassum mats out
at sea and you could make the same air that
Columbus made and think, oh, look at all the seaweed. Uh,
(15:50):
there's it's thick. It's everywhere. We must be really close
to land at this point. Sure. I don't know that
that's where the name comes from, but that makes sense. Yeah.
So on September six, ain't Columbus road, And this is
of course translated quote. We have begun to see large
patches of yellowish green weed, which seems to have been
torn away from some island or reef. I know better
(16:10):
because I make the mainland to be farther on. And
then on September sevent I saw a great deal of
weed today from rocks that lie to the west. I
take this to mean we are near land. The weed
resembles a grass, except that it has long stalks and
shoots and is loaded with fruit like the like the
Mastic tree. Um. So, uh, you know, I guess on
the on September six, it sounds like he was like, no,
(16:31):
you can't fool me. We're not that close to land.
But on September seventeen, he said, nope, we are close
to land. Look at all this seaweed. I had to
look up what the mastic tree is because I didn't know,
but it's the but it's known as Pistachia lentiscus. Ah. Yeah,
I looked up a picture of it as well, and
I do see some some prominent little round fruits that. Yeah,
(16:52):
the little berries that I assume that's that's what he
was comparing to the what what are actually new maticists? Yea.
As we mentioned earlier, the neumatis are these little tiny
berry shaped gas bladders that helped the the seaweed float.
But in this case, yeah, it looks kind of like
these berries in a tree that would have been familiar
to Columbus. I think the looking at the Mastic tree
apparently is useful for its resin thank so. A special
(17:22):
note is the Sargasso Sea. This is a truly vast
patch of sargassum. According to the Ocean Foundation, the Sargasso
Sea is sometimes referred to as the Atlantic Golden Rainforest
UH and the islands quote unquote uh in the Sargasso
Sea can be acres across, while the regions they occupy
(17:43):
can stretch for miles. Right now, the Sargasso Sea is
interesting because it is the only real sea in the
world that doesn't have any land boundaries. The Sargasso Sea
is a sea within an ocean. It's uh, this patch
in the mid all of the Northern Atlantic. Basically, it's
just a large patch if you were to look at
(18:04):
the eastern coast of the United States, uh and you
know in the Caribbean maybe with the bottom edge down
around like Cuba and uh in Puerto Rico, and then
going up along the the coast of North America up
towards Newfoundland, and then you just extend out east from there.
There's this big patch in the middle of the Atlantic
(18:25):
Ocean which is known as the Sargasso Sea. Now we
should be clear that it is not like blanket covered
in sargassum seaweed, but there are It is known for
having large rafts of sargassum seaweed within it, and the
Sargasso Sea is interesting in a number of ways. One
thing about it is it's known for having UH, for
(18:45):
being a place where ships can easily become be calmed,
and this is a a risk that people who are
not very familiar with sea voyages might not think about
very often. But back in the days of sailing, one
thing that was really danger riss is if the winds
die down and you can't say, you know, there's nothing
to propel your ship in the direction where it needs
(19:06):
to go. All throughout the the Atlantic around the Sargasso Sea,
there tend to be these wind currents. You know they're
there are winds that will blow you UH, that will
blow you east to west, down from the from the
coast of Africa, down towards UH, towards the Caribbean, and
towards the northern coast of South America. And then there
are winds and currents in the ocean that lead up
(19:29):
north along the east coast of North America. And then
if you go up north from there, there are winds
and currents that will lead you back towards the east
from the west. So essentially you create this box in
the middle of the North Atlantic that is surrounded by
currents that go in a circle around it, and this
is often known as the North Atlantic Gyre. Now, anyone
(19:51):
who's ever watched, you know, any number of sailing movies
or TV shows, or any TV show that includes like
a a voyage by sale across the ocean, This is
a This is almost a standard bottle episode right here,
where where suddenly the ship uh is in a is
in a region where there's just no no wind at all,
(20:12):
nothing could propel them, and everybody just sets around and
gets like superstitious and uh a little bit crazy until
the wind picks back up and saves everybody right. And
you can imagine like if you actually were traveling across
the Atlantic and you didn't know what you were what
you were going to see, or what was going to
be out there. Maybe you'd heard some tales of sea monsters.
Who knows. You get into an area where there is
(20:34):
less wind than you're used to than when you traveled
into the area, you are suddenly be calmed. It becomes
hard to travel and you're just kind of stuck there
in the water. And then you start seeing these weird
rafts floating around in the middle of the ocean. Towards you.
I can imagine that's pretty odd, YEA. And in fact,
we maybe don't have to imagine, because there are some
historical sources that that may well be referring to this.
(20:56):
I guess it's debatable whether they're referring to this or
something else. But uh, I wanted to look at the
question how long has the Sargasso Sea been written about? Uh.
It gets its current name from Portuguese sailors. I believe
of like you know, the the early modern period, or
actually I think before that, from like the fifteenth century.
But but I was looking around to see how far
(21:18):
back written accounts of the Sargasso c go. And I
found an interesting, possibly applicable bit of history in a
book by the British archaeologist and Oxford professor Sir Barry Cunliffe. Uh.
And the book is called on the Ocean, the Mediterranean
and Atlantic from Prehistory to a d fIF hundred from
(21:39):
Oxford University Press in And this is in a chapter
where Cunliffe is writing about records of exploration west of
the Pillars of Heracles. So the Pillars of Heracles today
are understood to refer to the Strait of Gibraltar, that
gap between between Morocco and the Iberian Peninsula, where you
(22:00):
can just go through this narrow passage to get out
of the Mediterranean Sea and into the broad Atlantic Ocean.
And so he's writing about the exploration beyond this point
out to the west by the ancient cultures of North Africa, Europe,
and Central Asia. And for for most of these cultures,
the Mediterranean Sea was of course their bread and butter.
(22:20):
I mean, the sea, even the Mediterranean Sea has has
plenty of dangers and mysteries to it. But sea voyages
within this region where you know, we're well understood for
for trade and and exploration and warfare and fishing and
all that. But sea voyages west into the Atlantic Ocean
or another story. And so you get plenty of tales
and say Greek thought and Greek mythology about islands that
(22:44):
maybe lay out to the west of the Pillars of Hercules,
way out there in the ocean that that is mostly
unexplored by your people. Most of the early explorers who
passed west of Gibraltar did so in order to travel
along the coast to the north or south. So this
would be traveling up along the coast of the Iberian
Peninsula to form these ports, along places like Cadiz that
(23:09):
became a Phoenician port, or south along the coast of Africa.
The Phoenicians and the Greeks did this to various extents,
but the vast and presumably mostly empty Atlantic Ocean was
not not among everybody, but widely assumed in ancient times
to be a place of mystery and danger, especially by
Greek authors. And Kunlife gives the example of the ancient
(23:31):
Greek poet Pindar, who was writing in the early fifth
century b c. E uh and so to quote from
Kunliffe here describing the pillars of Heracles, situated at the
western extremity of the known world, far from home, he advises, quote,
what lies beyond cannot be trodden by the wise or
the unwise. One cannot cross from Ghadeer towards the dark west.
(23:54):
Turn again the sails towards the dry land of Europe.
The dark west. Yeah, I mean this vast, stormy ocean.
You you don't know, if you know you travel out
on it, Like would would you even reach land if
you kept sailing? I mean it was not known. However,
kun Of writes that Phoenician sailors were more adventurous in
general in pushing westward uh And about around the year
(24:17):
six hundred b C. A Phoenician expedition sponsored by the
pharaoh Necho the second had been reported to have circumnavigated Africa.
And though we don't have the original sources for the
account that I'm about to describe, there are later Roman
quotations of the accounts of Phoenician sailors possibly pushing further
(24:41):
west into the Atlantic in exploration. And one of these
notable sailors was a Carthaginian navigator named him Ilco. That's
h I m I l c O, who lived probably
sometime in the fifth century b c. E. Now, the
Carthaginians were an ancient civilization that was based along the
coast of North Africa. I think their their capital was
(25:04):
in modern day Tunisia. But who expanded too much of
the ancient Mediterranean. And then here I'm going to read
from Cunliffe as he introduces and quotes another ancient source
for for knowledge about Himilco. So Himilco quote, whose report
published long ago in the secret Annals of the Carthaginians,
is selectively quoted in a grossly pretentious poem compiled by
(25:27):
our Roman administrator Rufus Festus Aviennas in the fourth century
a d. A few lines of his Aura maritima will
suffice to give the flavor. And then this quotes lines
three seventy four. To the west of these pillars, Himilco
reports that the swell is boundless, the sea extends widely
(25:49):
the salt water streaks. Fourth, no one has approached these waters.
No one has brought his keel into that sea, because
there are no propelling breezes at sea, and no breath
of Heaven's air aids the ship. Hence, because the mist
cloaks the air with a kind of garment, a cloud
always holds the swell and persists throughout the humid day.
(26:12):
And so that's describing possibly some of the becalmed area
of the North Atlantic, with like within the Gyre region
that we talked about before, you know, surrounded by the currents,
but is very often very still in that middle area
that overlaps with the Sargasso Sea. But then Cunliff goes
on to describe further how Aviennas quotes from him Ilko
(26:34):
to describe his voyage. Uh Cunlift writes Elsewhere he talks
of monsters of the deep and beasts who swim amid
the slow and sluggish crawling ships, and again great fear
of monsters stalks the deep. When the wind falls, the
sluggish liquid of the lazy sea is at a stand still,
while thick seaweed often tops the sea, and the tide
(26:57):
is hindered by the marshy rack. The marshy rack. Oh
yeah um and Kunlaf also says Himilko was evidently not
enamored of his encounter with the ocean. Perhaps perhaps his
vessel was drawn south into the dull drums and reach
the Sargasso Sea, as some commentators have suggested, or perhaps
(27:18):
he reported in this dispiriting way simply to aggrandize his
own achievement and to deter others. Another possibility is that
his original report was embroidered by Aviennus Uh. So we
don't know exactly what he's describing here and if what
he's describing is real, especially since we're only getting it
quoted by a secondary source and we don't have the
(27:38):
original source. But of course it is true. There's the
danger of the dull drums, the calm part of the
Atlantic where you won't have winds to propel your your sales. Uh,
so you can very well get trapped there. That could
well overlap with large stretches of seaweed, the sargassum seaweed
that you would find in the Sargasso Sea. So one
possible interpretation of what we're getting here is that this
(28:00):
ancient Carthaginian sailor him Ilco actually sailed to the Sargasso Sea, survived,
returned to Carthage eventually, and you know, lived to tell
the tale. But again it's worth stressing that modern some
modern scholars are are doubtful. It's hard to know for sure,
but some details line up if they're accurate. You've got
these reports about the marshy rack of seaweed coinciding with
(28:23):
the Doldrums. It it lines up in a kind of
interesting way. And then finally, of course, the mention of
sea monsters right the I wonder if it's possible to
mistake the shadow of a huge floating raft of sargassum
for a sea monster stalking the deep. Again, I don't know,
but it strikes me as possible. Yeah. Yeah, And well,
once you get into discussing sea monsters, of course, as
(28:45):
we've we've explored in the show before, especially looking at
the work of the check ven Douser. Yeah, right on
sea monsters. I believe he pointed out in his book
that you know, at times sea monsters are a manifestation
of uh certainly of of second and third hand accounts
of of actual organisms. Other times their products of the mind,
sometimes their products of of economic or political forces. So
(29:08):
they're the whole host of reasons uh to to speak
the word of the name of the sea monster. But
that's certainly the yeah, the doldrums that seemed to be
described here, and then the uh, the the rack, the muck,
the seaweed here this does sound a lot like the
descriptions modern descriptions of the sargassoc. Oh. And sorry, there's
(29:29):
one thing I didn't clarify, but just to avoid confusion,
because it's not a common word, I had to look
this up. Rack here in this quotation is spelled with
the W W R A C K, And I was like,
what is that referring to? Is that like referring to
like a like a shipwreck, because rack sometimes is an
alternate spelling of rack or wreckage. But also I looked
it up and apparently. It is also just a word
(29:51):
sometimes used to refer to a massive seaweed like green vegetation.
Could be oh, there is a rack with the W. Yeah, okay,
well sometimes it U. I wasn't familiar with the precise definition,
but I totally understood it in the context of the sentence.
It's like, look at this rack, there's no getting through it.
So so certainly you can imagine that the rack would
(30:12):
not be a great place to find yourself as a
human sailor, certainly in in ancient times. But of course
the Iraq is home to a great many organisms, as
we've already alluded to here. So uh for one thing,
you have you have various um micro and macro um epiphytes.
(30:35):
These are organisms that grow on the surface of a
plant and derived derives its moisture and nutrients from the air, rain,
and water. Uh. So you have that's those sorts of
organisms growing there. You have fung gi. You have more
than a hundred species of invertebrates that are known to
uh to to live within the sargassum, over a hundred
species of fish, four species of turtle. Again, and it
(30:56):
kind of spirals out because once you have a certain
amount of of life, uh, fostered within the sargassum, it's
going to attract other things as well, so you'll see
things like sharks showing up, etcetera. So we are not
going to attempt to cover everything that lives in the sargassum,
but we are going to talk about some of the standouts,
because there are some really fun, really interesting, really weird
(31:19):
organisms that call the rack home in the first of
which I want to talk about is the sargassum fish,
also known as the sargassum frog fish. Now, is this
the one that you lured me into this episode with?
Because the first thing that I became aware of when
you were getting interested in sargassum was was that you
came to me and you said, Joe, there is a
(31:40):
fish with hands. Yes, yes, this would be uh, this
would be the sargassum frog fish. Um and uh and
and I'll and I'll explain what I mean by by hands.
And they're not quite hands, but they are enough like
hands that you're committed to get excited um and uh
and yeah, it's probably the most famous sargas some denizen.
(32:01):
It's the species history of history o frog fish of
the family Uh. At Tinninara day and it's the only
species of its genus. So, uh, we'll describe them here,
but also feel free to look up images or video.
I mean, there's nothing quite like seeing video of these uh,
these creatures. I think there's some wonderful national geographic footage.
(32:23):
But also the Weird House Cinema selection for tomorrow also
will feature some actual footage of this creature right at
the top. Um So, the uh, the sargassum fish grows
to around twenty centimeters in lengths, so about seven point
eight inches. And I should I guess I should say,
first of all, they generally have this appearance that you'll
(32:45):
find with other frog fish um and uh and and
they're related to uh to the angler fish of the deep. Uh.
So they have these upturned mouths, which kind of give
them kind of this uh, the frowny face, look, this
kind of froggy appearance and uh and and so that
that's the first thing to drive home about them. So
(33:07):
they have that that kind of body that I think
at number of you can can imagine, but they sometimes
sort of think of it as the drawbridge jaw. Yes, yes,
that's a good way of describing a drawbridge jaw, and
of course, like like pretty much all fish, you know,
they're they're going to consume by by lunging and inhaling,
you know, pulling their their prey rapidly into their mouth.
(33:27):
Um their masters. These particular fish, though, uh, the sargassom
fish are masters of camouflage, at least within the sargassum environment,
because they've adapted to physically look like the sargassum, complete
with fleshy appendages that look like weed. I've seen some
of the some of the appendages have even been compared
(33:48):
to organisms that live within the weed um. So they
just they just they look like they're just a part
of the environment. You'll see images or even footage sometimes
of the sargassum fish hiding in the seaweed and you
really cannot pick them out with a human eye. I
think at some point I watched a documentary or part
of a documentary that had some of these in it,
(34:09):
and it was one of those like you know, trick
shots where they show you the shot and then it's
like there are three sargassum fish in the shot, you
can't see them at all, and then has to like
circle them or zoom in on them or something. I
think I've seen the same one. Yeah. Um. But of
course it's not just their physical structure and initial coloration.
The other cool thing about them is they can further
(34:29):
adjust their coloration from dark browns and greens to light
browns and greens to complete the illusion, to to fine
tune it so that they blend in you know, seemingly completely. Um.
And they can do this quite rapidly as well. This
is important for the sargassum fish because again it is
a voracious hunter, but also it's the jungle baby, so
(34:51):
you know they're they're also they also have to be
on guard against other predators, so it also helps protect them.
Now they let's get to the hands, so if you will,
uh so their pants, their pelvic fins uh, you know
the fins up front. They have nine to eleven rays
uh in them and they're stalked, essentially forming what act
(35:13):
like clause. Basically, they can use these things again they
look like clause, they look like fish clause, and they
can use these to grip objects, and they use these
to clamber over and through the seaweed. Okay, so they
can use them to grip objects, not in the sense
of like like our fingers where you would manipulate objects freely.
But they can grip things in the sense of like
(35:36):
sort of pushing against surfaces. Right. Yeah, they're not gonna
be able to use an iPhone, they can't play the
piano worth of dying, but but they can use these appendages.
You have to sort of grip and push through things,
which is gonna be vitally important when you're hanging out
in the sargassum like little gravoid spines. Yeah, so they're
really cool. Definitely look up. I mean they're beyond cool.
(35:58):
They're a little creepy looking. I highly recommended checking them out. Um. So, so,
obviously the adults live in the mats and their eggs
are placed there as well, but the larvae develop in
the water columns between fifty and six deep um. And
you might think, well that, I guess the sargassum environment
(36:18):
then is just no place for for kids, right um.
And this is certainly the case, especially since the sargassum
fish is more than happy to eat them as well.
So they're in They're not only incredibly voracious, but their
notorious cannibals. I was reading about some of the studies
where they've they've caught sargassum fish and they've they've looked
inside at their bellies and they'll find like multiple juveniles.
(36:41):
You know, they'll find some juveniles and they just they'll
just just gobble them up delicious. Yeah. So again, just
a fabulous fish. Just it's everything about it is uh
is both beautiful and frightening, uh in just the right proportions. Now,
they're not the only creature that that that lives are again,
and they're not the only creature that that takes a
(37:02):
sargassum as part of its uh you know, official or
unofficial name. For instance, there's the sargassum pipe fish. This
is a species of pipe fish that makes its home
in the sargassum mats uh. And like all pipe fish
and seahorses, the male carries the egg. Um. They're just
into these elongated um, you know, beautiful fish with that
kind of signature, uh seahorsey head now. Um. Just briefly
(37:25):
a couple of other organisms. Well, first, in general should
say that that the Sargasso Sea in particular is a
spawning site for various eels, uh, including threatened and endangered eels.
But speaking of decapods, there is also worth our consideration.
The sargassum swimming crab or U Portunists say, I, uh,
(37:46):
this is uh just one variety of crab you'll find
in sargassum mats, but it's an impressive one and a
species adapted to blend into the environment. They have an
orange brown colorization that apparently matches up with the sargassum
pretty well. And as the name implies, they're more adapted
for swimming than walking. U. The fourth pair of legs
(38:06):
are modified into paddle like structures. Now, crabs, of of course,
are noted for walking sideways, so you might wonder how
does it swim. Well, they tend to swim sideways as well. Uh,
and apparently they're quite fast. They depend on a mix
of active and passive hunting, so they'll they'll actively chase
after something again sideways uh to catch it, but they'll
(38:28):
also fall back on that that sort of ambush hunting
within the jungle of the sargassum. Yeah. Now, in addition
to these organisms that spend all or most of their
lives in the sargassum, there are also organisms that use
sargassum as a sort of like a stepping stone during
(38:50):
their migration patterns. One example that's often referenced would be
young sea turtles. Yeah, and I've also heard that it's
important to even like migratory birds for species. Again, it's
it's it's an oasis in the wastes, an oasis in
the desert of the sea. Thank thank so. Now, earlier
(39:12):
we we alluded to the sargassum being not not only
this this bountiful environment, but also potentially a problem, a
problem for humans and the sort of human likes and
dislikes concerning beaches, but also just for the environment as
a whole. As the Ocean Foundation points out, it's ecologically
(39:34):
important the sargassum, but it doesn't mean it doesn't have
some downsides, especially when you're dealing with large volumes. Right,
And this is something that's become especially a problem within
just the last decade or so. Actually, it can really
be dated to a year in particular from what from
everything we've been reading for the year two thousand eleven.
(39:54):
Starting around two thousand eleven, something started happening with sargass
them in the Atlantic Ocean where there was a sudden
increase that has gone on in many years since then,
of of sargassum inundations where beaches and shore lines along
areas in the Caribbean, along the coast of Florida, along
(40:16):
places in the coast of the northern coast of South
America would just be caked with sargassum, like they're just
mounds and mounds of seaweed piling up to the point
that it in some cases would make these shores unusable
for what humans have been using them for, usually in
in the years beforehand. Yeah, if if any of you
(40:37):
out there are are snorkelers, or are you know, related
to our friends with snorkeling enthusiasts, then you've you've probably
heard about the blight of sargassum, about the disappointment of off, say,
you know, reaching a popular snorkeling area and finding that
there's just sargassum everywhere, um, you know. So it's in
(40:57):
particular one of the things that the Ocean Foundation points out,
huge rafts of it can actually smother other sea grasses
and even coral reefs. Um. You know. Granted, coral reefs
are facing uh a number of problems, um, you know,
and are and uh and we've gone into that in
past episodes. But but certainly this could disrupt your ability
(41:18):
to even properly view them as a as a tourist
in the ocean, as a as a snorkeler, um, you know,
out there trying to to observe this natural habitat. Uh
it can also this is interesting this this has brought
up as well. Apparently sargassum can serve as a means
of transport for invasive species. Though UM, I honestly wonder
(41:40):
if this at all compares to human enabled invasive species transport.
It seems like, um it almost wouldn't matter compared to
what humans can and have done. Uh you know, importing
species like the lion fish into regions that um, that
that are not balanced enough to to contain them. Well, yes,
(42:00):
but I would also say that there I think there
is at least a strong likelihood that human behavior is
a major contributor to these these new build ups of
sargassum in the last Yeah, and we'll and we'll get
into into more of that in just a second. Um,
just a few more points here that the Ocean Foundation
made Uh. Sargassum of course can prevent boats and fishermen
(42:22):
from setting out to sea. It can also prevent sea
turtles from making it to nest in these cases as well.
So you know, again you have it massing up on
the beach. In particular, if it's um, you know, a
certain amount of that is arguably good for the beach,
but if you have too much of it, yeah, it's
gonna actually interfere potentially in a sea turtle's ability to
(42:44):
come on shore lady eggs and then have the hatchlings
be able to properly get back out to sea again
in in an appropriate amount of time. And if it
masses on the beach, the sargassum it, if it's not
removed in time, it can produce hydrogen sulfide, which can
have a made your can have major detrimental effects on
coastal ecosystems. Yeah, I mean, it can have all kinds
(43:05):
of negative effects on the wildlife itself. I mean, one
would be like if it doesn't reach the beach, if
you're just talking about it still being in the water.
Big blooms of algal organisms in the water can have
downstream effects when the blooms eventually die and then there's
all of this dead, decomposing material in the water, and
(43:26):
then the decomposition of that material ends up robbing the
water of dissolved oxygen, which in turn leads to these
big fish die offs and die offs of other organisms
because there's not enough oxygen in the water for them
to breathe. Yeah, and also all that decomposition in the
water can promote harmful blooms of bacteria and other microbes.
I guess the way to to to think of it
(43:48):
is it's basically like spiraling imbalance in the ecosystem. And
uh and and uh it's it's place in this. This
this the cascade of imbalance. Now to get kind of
a I guess sort of a bird's eye or I
guess satellite view of things. Um. I found this pretty helpful.
(44:11):
I was looking at a July twenty nineteen article from
NASA Goddard. They utilize the satellite images to observe the
Great Atlantic Sargassum belt. Uh so at this point, based
on simulations, they confirmed that its shape was due to
ocean currents and that it can grow large enough so
as to blanket the surface of the Tropical Atlantic from
(44:33):
the west coast of Africa to the Gulf of Mexico.
Major blooms have occurred in every year between twenty eleven
and again this was a July articles, so that's as
far up as it went at the time. UH, with
the exception of which this was apparently UH this year
was impacted by unusually low seed populations during the winter,
(44:56):
but otherwise eleven onward, it's been sargassum season. Prior to
most of the free floating sargassum in the ocean was
primarily found in patches around the Gulf of Mexico and
the Sargasso Sea. But then something changed, something seemingly in
the biochemistry the ocean. Obviously, you know, people were asking
(45:18):
a lot of questions about climate change UH and and
ultimately I guess the reality is is complicated, but basically yes,
it's pointed out by a doctor Paula Bontempi of NASA's
Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry Program, the ocean's biochemistry is changing
due to a mix of natural and human forces, and
it seems to be leading to an ecosystem shift with
(45:41):
important implications for marine life and human life. Since we
depend on many of the species in question and live
in in in many of the environments that are impacted. UH.
Climate change is certainly a key aspect of this as
it impacts precipitation and ocean circulation, but increased water temperatures
typically don't seem to be the cause. It's these other causes.
(46:03):
But again, uh, climate change is very much part of
the issue. I don't want to make it sound like
it's not. Yeah, if you were. If you want to
read more in depth about this research, there's a really
good article in The Atlantic by Ed Young from July
nineteen called hy waves of seaweed have been smothering Caribbean beaches. Again,
this from July nineteen by Ed Young. Uh, that's worth
(46:25):
looking up, and it gets into a lot of the
difficulty and uncertainty in trying to figure out exactly what
the underlying factors leading to this change that we first
saw in the year two thousand eleven was establishing this
this huge belt of sargassum that was not there previously.
And what we want to be very clear, this Atlantic
sargassum belt is different from the sargassum in the Sargasso Sea.
(46:48):
The Sargasso Sea is further north in the North Atlantic
off the east coast of of like the United States,
whereas this would be something that stretches more between Brazil
and Africa. In fact, one of the things that Ed
Young writes about in this article was the very idea
of the satellite photos that you were talking about that
one of the fortunate things for studying sargassum blooms on
(47:11):
the large scale is that sargassum reflects more infrared light
than the seawater around it, So when you look down
with satellites, sargassum patches can appear as hot spots in
the ocean that can be seen from space. Young sites, Uh,
the researcher named Jim Gower of the Fisheries and Oceans
Canada for for doing this satellite research. But yeah, the
(47:35):
the satellite photos found that the bloom really began in
April of two thousand eleven, which correlates with you know
these times when these pile ups on the beaches, the
sargassum inundations really started becoming a problem that people noticed.
But they started noticing the blooms off the coast of
Brazil in the satellite images from two thousand eleven. And
(47:57):
then Young also points to research by someone named Ming
Chi Wang from the University of South Florida who, along
with her colleagues, they've basically established that, yeah, this bloom
is just going to be an ongoing yearly thing now,
uh that that it's coming and it's probably not going
to stop. Though. One of the interesting things this article
gets into is a delay between the proximate causes that
(48:21):
are likely leading to the blooms and then when the
blooms show up within you know, what we can see
with our satellites or what's piling up on our beaches.
Because a couple of the factors that have been identified
as likely candidates leading to these blooms. One is um
is water being discharged from the Amazon River. You know,
(48:41):
it's coming out of South America. UM. And this water
coming out of the Amazon River is probably being especially
saturated with nutrients from agriculture that's happening all along the
Amazon basin, and so this is like it's like for
fertilizer that is flooding into the ocean, and then of
(49:03):
course that is feeding blooms of of this macro algae.
And then there are other factors they get into that
are probably contributing, such as like what the different temperatures
are this year. It's the same thing you were talking
about that um that climate change doesn't seem to be
the cause of it in the sense of increasing ocean
temperatures lead to uh, lead to macro alogy blooms, because
(49:25):
that doesn't appear to be the case, but downstream other
effects of climate change are very likely contributing to this.
It's just not the temperature of the water itself. Another
factor that they're talking about is access to the seed
populations of of seaweed. It's like, how many patches of
seaweed are there leftover that survived the winter of the
(49:47):
previous year and can act as a kind of seed
for the regrowth of the seaweed every new season. Yeah,
because I think it kind of brings back that that
point about the neumaticis having a like a year lifespan,
so there's gonna be a certain amount of crossover as
well here from one year to the next. Um. I
was impressed one of the quotes you pulled from from
(50:09):
the eight young article just about how many tons of
seaweed we're talking about here? Yeah, yeah, yeah, So the estimate,
I think this would be referring to the year previous
to when this article was written, So it was published
in twenty nineteen, so I think this would be referring
to the summer of eighteen during June, when the Sargassin
Belt was at at its most fruitful, it was estimated
(50:31):
to contain twenty two million tons of seaweed. And then
there's even a clarification later in the article that that
estimate is probably low since the resolution of the satellite
camera that's taking the infrared imagery to establish that number,
it has like a minimum sort of pixel distance resolution,
(50:51):
so it can only see patches that show up at
a minimum resolution of something like a kilometer. I think
it was. It could be long about that. Uh, doing
that just stuff memory, but I think that's what it was.
And uh. And so like patches that are smaller than that,
with which there are probably plenty, they're not even really
showing up on the imaging. So that's a lot of seaweed.
That's a lot of seaweed, folks, And there's a lot
(51:13):
and that's ending up on a lot of it's ending
up on the shores eventually. But one thing that is
worth stressing again is that while researchers have probably identified
some very good candidates for the explanations of of these
blooms and inundations of sargassum in the last decade or so.
There's still some uncertainty. There's like stuff we don't know
about what what could be leading to it and what
(51:35):
could be the limiting and contributing factors. Anyway, that the
article by ed Young is a really good read. You
should look it up. Yeah, absolutely, I recommend that one. Now.
You know, in the past, I think it's been brought
up when we're dealing with invasive species or species that
are out of balance, one of the best things that
you can do is develop an appetite for that species,
(51:58):
uh in human being. Now, I don't I don't think
anybody's making an argument that that could um make a
difference with the sargassum. But it is again worth noting
that sargassum is something that humans can eat. Uh. We
we mentioned that already, and I found a wonderful blog
titled Eat the Weeds with Green Dean. Um. So his
(52:20):
name is Dean, but he's Green Dean. Get it and
the blogs. The blog is titled Sargassum Sea Vegetable And
in this post, Green Dean points to a few different
culinary traditions that have recipes for sargassum. Uh. Though he
points out that given the different species. Basically, it's sargassum
is going to quote very in taste and texture, So
(52:42):
there is no one way to cook your local species. Uh.
He says that some amount of experimentation is going to
be required, but basically he goes through different cuisines in
this post, points out that sometimes it's consumed fresh. Other
times it's cooked, saying coconut milk or vinegar or lemon juice.
Other Times it's smoke dried, or it's boiled. Sometimes it's
(53:04):
even sweetened and put into steam buns. Sometimes it's cooked
with fish. Basically, they're just numerous ways to approach it,
but it's it's worth checking out. The link I recommended
it said, eat the weeds dot com you'll find a
post on the sargasm sea vegetable. Um. I'm not sure
I've ever had sargassum in a dish. Maybe I have
(53:25):
and I just wasn't alert to it, But now I
feel like I really, I really want to have it.
I don't know if I have either. I mean, I've
had a number of seaweed salads, but I don't know
what species were in them. Yeah, well, I know some
basic things. I mean, I know like combo and combo,
of course, is a seaweed based food additive that is
an amazing source of umami flavor. It's it's it's almost
(53:46):
like raw msg. It's that it's good stuff um But
but yeah, other than that, I don't know. I mean,
I've had I've had like various seaweed salads at Japanese
restaurants that have had different types of seaweeds, some that
looked kind of like orange around, like like some species
of sargassum do So maybe I have I don't know. Huh, yeah,
I think I've I've only I know of at least
(54:07):
one time, had like a sampler of seaweed salads from
the Japanese restaurant. But in those cases, I think they
were all still rather green. They didn't have um any
kind of darker coloration. So I don't know. I'm gonna
look for it now now it is on it is
it is something I want to specifically try out, knowing
that it is sargassum. I just looked it up to
(54:28):
make sure. I I thought that combo was not sargassum,
and it is not. Comb is a type of kelp. Well, obviously,
we'd love to hear from everyone out there about this
topic in general, but but specifically on this question of
the cooking and the consumption of sargassum. If you've if
you you definitely know you've had it, and you've had
in a particular way that was yummy or or or
(54:50):
or not yummy, let us know we would love to
hear from you, and likewise, just in you know, in general,
any feedback about about the various organisms we've discussed here
surrounding sar assam or uh sargassom, seaweed itself. Perhaps you're
a snorkeler and have your you know, two cents you
want to throw in, uh right in, we'd like to
hear from you. In the meantime, if you would like
(55:11):
to hear other episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind,
you can find us in the Stuff to Blow your
Mind podcast feed and you know where to find that
just wherever you get podcasts UM subscribe if you can
rate us, if the platform allows you to um, you
know it gives us. I guess a good rating is
what we're asking for. You know, that supposedly helps us out,
But in general, we're just thankful if you're if you're
(55:33):
listening to the show and uh, you know right in.
Let us know what you like about the show, what
what you would like to hear from us in the future,
what other topics you would like us to consider. Yes, absolutely,
uh so, I guess we're closing out here, so huge
thanks as always to our wonderful audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.
If you would like to get in touch with us,
as as Rob just asked there, to let us know
(55:55):
feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a
topic for a future episode, or just to say hi,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my
(56:16):
heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This is
Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're actually
bringing you a vault episode to help get us through
some some people being out of office here and there
over the next couple of weeks. So today's episode originally
published April nine, and it was on the Sargassum Seaweed.
(00:25):
That's right. This is the fun episode, full of fantastic
creatures in a wonderful environment and also a few allusions
to a movie we discussed on Weird How Cinema Z
also known as the Blood Waters of Dr Z. So
if you're interested in that Weird How Cinema episode, you'll
find that in the back catalog. Now, to lay things
out for you, I think we do have a fresh
(00:47):
original episode coming up for you on Thursday of this week.
Then we'll have a few more vaults for you the
week after that, But then we should be back with
all new things once again. Right, Welcome to Stuff to
Blow Your Mind, production of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome
(01:10):
to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert
Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're going to
go into the wettest of the woods, the saltiest of
the woods. Today the woods are salty, dark and deep.
And and we have promises to keep and miles to
float before we sleep, because we're going to be looking
at a sort of jungle in the ocean. That's right. Uh.
(01:33):
The ocean. Uh, it knows quite a mix of environments,
from rich coral reefs to desolate deep sea waste, from
sunlit shallows to hydrothermal vent heated depths. Marine organisms, of course,
face numerous challenges, but the most basic demands boiled down to,
you know, how not to end, how not to die,
how to prolong? It's era to quote waiting for the barbarians.
(01:59):
But this is especially of your small or your young organism.
You're gonna need food, and you're gonna need shelter. Uh,
And there's always going to be something trying to eat you.
And for a number of organisms, this is provided by Sargassum,
a genus of brown seaweed of sometimes brown, sometimes described
as brown and orange um as well. Discuss there a
(02:21):
number of different species here, but uh. Sargassum thrives abundantly
in the ocean. It floats free of the ocean floor
It provides a buoyant, free floating environment that travels on
the tides and offers food, refuge, breeding grounds, nurseries, hunting grounds,
et cetera for a wide variety of organisms. So in
(02:42):
this episode, we're going to discuss the sargassum organisms themselves,
the environment that they offer, some of its benefactors, and
also the problems posed by the so called Great Atlantic
sargassum Belt. Yeah, and that last point is interesting because
I will say, when you think of sea, do you
think of the macroalgy world, you don't usually think of
(03:03):
it as something that is particularly economically devastating or or
or even economically all that significant. But but that that
is not the case for sargassum. Yeah, as well. It's
it's it's an interesting topic to explore because in its
present form, it kind of cuts both ways. It's both
vitally important to uh to so many organisms and a
(03:25):
number of organisms that are then important to us, you know,
various um uh you know marine species that we depend on,
various fish and so forth. But then on the other hand, uh,
in an environment that is increasingly out of balance, uh,
it also poses a threat and it can pose quite
a nuisance, So we'll get into all that. So what
(03:46):
got you thinking about sargassum for today, Rob, Well, it's
because tomorrow's episode of Weird House Cinema will entail sargassum
and casual mention of a few of the creatures, one
creature in particular that calls it home. Um. Well, we'll
try to save all of that for tomorrow's episode. But
but yeah, that was probably the first place I heard
(04:08):
of sargassum, the Weed of deceit. I was wondering if
we should announce the movie, but maybe we should just
make everyone wait to find out if they're going to
be wondering, Wait, is it a Jaws clone where it's
a big raft of seaweed instead of a shark. Is
it like the Blair Witch Project, but instead of getting
lost in the woods of Virginia or wherever it is,
you get lost in the woods of the ocean of
(04:28):
the Sargasso Sea. Well that the truth will just suddenly
strike out at them and there'll be nothing they can
do about it. Uh So, So tune in tomorrow if
you wish for that. But but for this episode, we're
going to focus on first on on Sargassum. The the organism,
so sargassum glimpsed in the ocean or on the beach,
(04:50):
it might just look like a big heap of brown mess.
But about closer look you'll notice that it's composed of branches,
leafy bits, and what looked like plump berries. But they're
not berries, So don't don't pick them. Uh, I mean,
I guess you could pick them, But what they are
actually are newmaticists. These are air bubbles, um. Uh. They
(05:11):
are part of the organism held that you know, in
in these little cysts that help it excel at floating
around right. Because of course, there are different types of seaweed,
and some types of seaweed spend their life, you know,
submerged in the water, and they might be say, anchored
down by a type of organ known as a hold fast.
That is somewhat analogous to like the root ball of
(05:32):
a tree that holds it, except in the case of seaweed,
it would hold clumps of seaweed to the ocean floor.
Not entirely analogous, I mean, for many reasons, one of
which is that, uh, is that the seaweed that we're
talking about today is technically not even a plant. It
is a type of macroalgae, which will explain more about.
But in the case of sargassum, Uh, there are types
of sargassum that are free floating organisms that spend much
(05:56):
or all of their lives just floating on top of
the water to have good access to sunlight, of course,
which they need in order to make their food to survive.
But they've got to just sit there and float on
the top. And they're actually not even anchored to the
bottom at all. They just float out in the open ocean.
And I do just want to stress again that the
genus is Sargassum, and there I believe about a hundred
(06:17):
and fifty species um all sargassum. Uh. The hundred and
fifty number, I got that from the Ocean Foundation, though
curiously I saw some higher numbers out there as well.
I don't know if those were accurate. I'm sticking with
the one, right. So, there are different kinds that you'll find,
especially in different parts of the oceans around the world,
right Uh. And we'll be talking about some key ones though,
(06:38):
that are the most abundant, or at least in the
end of the part of the world that we're gonna
be discussing here. So, as I mentioned, sargassum is a
brown macroalgay, so it is different than plants. And how
exactly is it different than plants? Yeah? I think this
is also important to stress because if you don't think
much about seaweed, you might just you know, you know,
(06:59):
you might just as soon we all right, it's some
sort of plant that grows in the water. Um, And
I think that you might be reasonable to make that
assumption just based on its physical appearance, and certainly the
word seaweed um. Weeds are plants, yeah, yeah, And and
seaweed is also used informally a lot of times to
describe both the algae and some plant organisms. But the
(07:20):
algae are protests, meaning they are uh eukaryotic organisms, which
are not animals plants or fun gi um so land
plants for their part, they likely derived from fresh water
algae about five hundred million years ago. An algae is,
of course, when we look at the just the root
of the word um, they're synonymous with seaweed, as alga
(07:44):
is the Latin for seaweed. Okay, so if you if
you just think about algae like the most I would
say if I was to go on my own personal
life experience. When I hear the word algae by itself,
what I tend to think of is kind of green
pond scum, you know, kind of very like something floating
on top of a stagnant freshwater body like a pond
(08:08):
or a lake, that is made of tiny little fibers
that just kind of clumped together. Doesn't have any recognizable
macro structures the way larger plants like like flowers or
trees would. But that is not true of all kinds
of algae. These macro algaes that we see in these
types of seaweed, they have more complex structures that are
(08:29):
more like the structures of land plants. So they might
have something that is akin to the stalk of a
land plant and something that is akin to the leaves.
In these cases, they would be algal fronds. Yes, yeah,
so yeah again they look very plant like. You can
easily look at them and say, oh, they're will leave,
they're the berries. But uh, at any rate, again, a
hundred and fifty different species of sargassum uh, though we're
(08:54):
generally going to be talking about specific dominant species within
given regions. For instance, the two varieties found most often
in the Caribbean are Sargassum natan's and Sargassum fluitans um.
I don't think it would be necessary to remember that,
but just know that again, we're gonna we're probably gonna
refer to sargassum a lot, just generally, but we're gonna
(09:16):
ultimately be dealing with specific species that are dominant within
a given a region. So sargassum reproduces a sexually through fragmentation,
a form of a sexual reproduction in which parents split
into fragments and those fragments then become adults. And furthermore,
the Caribbean sargasm species in particular, and some of these
(09:36):
other varieties that are important are hollow pelagic. That means
that they not only float freely on the ocean, but
they also reproduce vegetatively on the high seas. So they're
they're completely in international waters, you know, they're they're they're
they're a monkey knife fight that the land has no
control over. So yeah, but that would mean that they
(09:59):
don't they can do their whole life cycle without like
anchoring to the bottom at any point or returning to
shore or anything like that. Right, And that's gonna that's
gonna becoming important later on. It get it really gets
in ultimately the idea of sargassum being the wheat of
the seed, so it grows abundantly in the ocean, where
it forms vast floating rafts, as it's sometimes called. Though um,
(10:21):
I don't think these are rafts in the sense that
you could, you know, be a shipwrecked sailor at sea
and climb on top of it or hoist a sail
on it. But essentially just big rafts, big floating chunks
of of the sargassum, all tingled together, stretching in some
cases for miles, and these form in areas of converging
surface currents u and in doing so they create a
(10:42):
vital environment, like we alluded to earlier. But on top
of the environment, the organism itself provides food. According to
the Ocean Foundation, sargassum contributes and estimated six of the
total primary production in the upper one meter of the
water column. Okay, so that would refer to like different
different stages of the food chain. So you've got the
(11:03):
primary producers that are familiar to us. These are generally
photosynthesizing organisms, like like plants on land, you know, that
absorbs sunlight to power the chemical reactions that make their bodies.
And then you've got the secondary uh, characters on the
food chain that eat the primary producers. You know that
that eat plants to survive, the same thing is true
in the ocean. So you've got these primary producers that
(11:25):
are at least near the top of the water column
are going to be basing their their energy cycle on
sunlight to to produce these molecules that make up their
body that that in turn are eaten by other organisms
that are the sort of the secondary organisms in that
food chain. Yeah, it's it's like you said at the
very beginning, this is the forest that we're discussing. Like
in a way, don't think of the ocean itself as
(11:47):
the forest. Think of the think of the sargassum. These
going to these rafts of sargassum as the forest. Because
the ocean, as we've discussed in the show before, the
ocean can be a wasteland. The ocean can be a
desert and um and in desert, the sargassum can be
the oasis um. It serves as a place of refuge
for various creatures as well as again breeding grounds nurseries.
(12:09):
In fact, it's the primary nursery for a number of
important to human to humans, especially fish species like the
Ma ma. And given all of this activity that's going
on at the various creatures that call it home, sometimes
exclusively uh, their home, it's also prime stalking zone for
many marine predators, So both sargasm predators who live there
and have evolved a thrive in its environment, but also
(12:32):
general marine apex predators that are drawn in by the by,
by the riches there by the biodiversity. Uh, let's see
if a few other just sort of general um facts
about sargassum. It can survive wide temperature and salinity variances,
and after about a year, those new maticists that help
it to remain buoyant, uh, they lose their buoyancy and
(12:55):
bits of sargassum will then sink to the sea floor,
where it will actually been up providing carbon for various
deep sea creatures. So it's not only an important energy
source for the sunlit shallow regions of the sea, but
for the dark depths as well. I guess, serving as
kind of like that that nutrient rainfall that we've talked
about before that rains upon the deep and indeed when
(13:16):
it washes up on the shore. Uh. I guess for
for the most part we're talking about it. If it's
washing up in manageable quantities, um, it can actually nourish beaches,
It can prevent sand from blowing away. Uh. And when
it washes up, it also serves as a food source
for various coastal species. Um. And not only is it
(13:37):
generally not harmful to humans, it's actually edible. More than that,
in a bit, uh, there are also possible biofuel and
pharmaceutical possibilities for sargassum um. We'll get into some of
the drawbacks later on, but but one of the interesting
things here is that like the idea of just sargassum
piling up on the beach again in manageable quality quant quantities,
it does bring to mind that sort of contest, that
(14:02):
disagreement at times over what constitutes the beach or what
the beach should look like. You know, should there be
anything on the beach other than um human strolling and
enjoying their vacation. You know, uh, you know some of
the some of the really beautiful beaches out there, a
lot of times they are manicured, you know, things like
seaweed are collected regularly in order to have that sort
(14:23):
of Hollywood beach presented. Uh. And in many cases there's
an argument to me, may then no debris would be
on the beach naturally, and it in the right quantities,
it can be important to keeping the sand from washing away,
keeping the beach from eroding, etcetera. I can see the
point of view that would say I'm okay with the
beach that has natural debris, but not unmanageable amounts of
(14:46):
natural debris or artificial debris. I mean you certainly you
know you don't want too many beer cans. That's going
to kind of ruin your beach experience. Yeah, nobody wants
to step on a beer can on the beach, but likewise,
nobody really wants to have to walk over a tin
foot high a mound of urgassum like dead, rotting seaweed.
Right right now, Um, we're gonna be getting into the
(15:06):
history of humanities awareness and understanding of sargassum uh here.
And the first bit I want to share is that
you know, certainly early sailors described sargassum mats, and one
individual in particular, Christopher Columbus UH This was in when
abundance sargassum fooled Columbus into thinking he was approaching land.
(15:30):
And I couldn't find anything that really defined this for me.
I don't know if you did, Joe, but I assume
this is what the term the weed of Deceit refers
to the idea that you might encounter sargassum mats out
at sea and you could make the same air that
Columbus made and think, oh, look at all the seaweed. Uh,
(15:50):
there's it's thick. It's everywhere. We must be really close
to land at this point. Sure. I don't know that
that's where the name comes from, but that makes sense. Yeah.
So on September six, ain't Columbus road, And this is
of course translated quote. We have begun to see large
patches of yellowish green weed, which seems to have been
torn away from some island or reef. I know better
(16:10):
because I make the mainland to be farther on. And
then on September sevent I saw a great deal of
weed today from rocks that lie to the west. I
take this to mean we are near land. The weed
resembles a grass, except that it has long stalks and
shoots and is loaded with fruit like the like the
Mastic tree. Um. So, uh, you know, I guess on
the on September six, it sounds like he was like, no,
(16:31):
you can't fool me. We're not that close to land.
But on September seventeen, he said, nope, we are close
to land. Look at all this seaweed. I had to
look up what the mastic tree is because I didn't know,
but it's the but it's known as Pistachia lentiscus. Ah. Yeah,
I looked up a picture of it as well, and
I do see some some prominent little round fruits that. Yeah,
(16:52):
the little berries that I assume that's that's what he
was comparing to the what what are actually new maticists? Yea.
As we mentioned earlier, the neumatis are these little tiny
berry shaped gas bladders that helped the the seaweed float.
But in this case, yeah, it looks kind of like
these berries in a tree that would have been familiar
to Columbus. I think the looking at the Mastic tree
apparently is useful for its resin thank so. A special
(17:22):
note is the Sargasso Sea. This is a truly vast
patch of sargassum. According to the Ocean Foundation, the Sargasso
Sea is sometimes referred to as the Atlantic Golden Rainforest
UH and the islands quote unquote uh in the Sargasso
Sea can be acres across, while the regions they occupy
(17:43):
can stretch for miles. Right now, the Sargasso Sea is
interesting because it is the only real sea in the
world that doesn't have any land boundaries. The Sargasso Sea
is a sea within an ocean. It's uh, this patch
in the mid all of the Northern Atlantic. Basically, it's
just a large patch if you were to look at
(18:04):
the eastern coast of the United States, uh and you
know in the Caribbean maybe with the bottom edge down
around like Cuba and uh in Puerto Rico, and then
going up along the the coast of North America up
towards Newfoundland, and then you just extend out east from there.
There's this big patch in the middle of the Atlantic
(18:25):
Ocean which is known as the Sargasso Sea. Now we
should be clear that it is not like blanket covered
in sargassum seaweed, but there are It is known for
having large rafts of sargassum seaweed within it, and the
Sargasso Sea is interesting in a number of ways. One
thing about it is it's known for having UH, for
(18:45):
being a place where ships can easily become be calmed,
and this is a a risk that people who are
not very familiar with sea voyages might not think about
very often. But back in the days of sailing, one
thing that was really danger riss is if the winds
die down and you can't say, you know, there's nothing
to propel your ship in the direction where it needs
(19:06):
to go. All throughout the the Atlantic around the Sargasso Sea,
there tend to be these wind currents. You know they're
there are winds that will blow you UH, that will
blow you east to west, down from the from the
coast of Africa, down towards UH, towards the Caribbean, and
towards the northern coast of South America. And then there
are winds and currents in the ocean that lead up
(19:29):
north along the east coast of North America. And then
if you go up north from there, there are winds
and currents that will lead you back towards the east
from the west. So essentially you create this box in
the middle of the North Atlantic that is surrounded by
currents that go in a circle around it, and this
is often known as the North Atlantic Gyre. Now, anyone
(19:51):
who's ever watched, you know, any number of sailing movies
or TV shows, or any TV show that includes like
a a voyage by sale across the ocean, This is
a This is almost a standard bottle episode right here,
where where suddenly the ship uh is in a is
in a region where there's just no no wind at all,
(20:12):
nothing could propel them, and everybody just sets around and
gets like superstitious and uh a little bit crazy until
the wind picks back up and saves everybody right. And
you can imagine like if you actually were traveling across
the Atlantic and you didn't know what you were what
you were going to see, or what was going to
be out there. Maybe you'd heard some tales of sea monsters.
Who knows. You get into an area where there is
(20:34):
less wind than you're used to than when you traveled
into the area, you are suddenly be calmed. It becomes
hard to travel and you're just kind of stuck there
in the water. And then you start seeing these weird
rafts floating around in the middle of the ocean. Towards you.
I can imagine that's pretty odd, YEA. And in fact,
we maybe don't have to imagine, because there are some
historical sources that that may well be referring to this.
(20:56):
I guess it's debatable whether they're referring to this or
something else. But uh, I wanted to look at the
question how long has the Sargasso Sea been written about? Uh.
It gets its current name from Portuguese sailors. I believe
of like you know, the the early modern period, or
actually I think before that, from like the fifteenth century.
But but I was looking around to see how far
(21:18):
back written accounts of the Sargasso c go. And I
found an interesting, possibly applicable bit of history in a
book by the British archaeologist and Oxford professor Sir Barry Cunliffe. Uh.
And the book is called on the Ocean, the Mediterranean
and Atlantic from Prehistory to a d fIF hundred from
(21:39):
Oxford University Press in And this is in a chapter
where Cunliffe is writing about records of exploration west of
the Pillars of Heracles. So the Pillars of Heracles today
are understood to refer to the Strait of Gibraltar, that
gap between between Morocco and the Iberian Peninsula, where you
(22:00):
can just go through this narrow passage to get out
of the Mediterranean Sea and into the broad Atlantic Ocean.
And so he's writing about the exploration beyond this point
out to the west by the ancient cultures of North Africa, Europe,
and Central Asia. And for for most of these cultures,
the Mediterranean Sea was of course their bread and butter.
(22:20):
I mean, the sea, even the Mediterranean Sea has has
plenty of dangers and mysteries to it. But sea voyages
within this region where you know, we're well understood for
for trade and and exploration and warfare and fishing and
all that. But sea voyages west into the Atlantic Ocean
or another story. And so you get plenty of tales
and say Greek thought and Greek mythology about islands that
(22:44):
maybe lay out to the west of the Pillars of Hercules,
way out there in the ocean that that is mostly
unexplored by your people. Most of the early explorers who
passed west of Gibraltar did so in order to travel
along the coast to the north or south. So this
would be traveling up along the coast of the Iberian
Peninsula to form these ports, along places like Cadiz that
(23:09):
became a Phoenician port, or south along the coast of Africa.
The Phoenicians and the Greeks did this to various extents,
but the vast and presumably mostly empty Atlantic Ocean was
not not among everybody, but widely assumed in ancient times
to be a place of mystery and danger, especially by
Greek authors. And Kunlife gives the example of the ancient
(23:31):
Greek poet Pindar, who was writing in the early fifth
century b c. E uh and so to quote from
Kunliffe here describing the pillars of Heracles, situated at the
western extremity of the known world, far from home, he advises, quote,
what lies beyond cannot be trodden by the wise or
the unwise. One cannot cross from Ghadeer towards the dark west.
(23:54):
Turn again the sails towards the dry land of Europe.
The dark west. Yeah, I mean this vast, stormy ocean.
You you don't know, if you know you travel out
on it, Like would would you even reach land if
you kept sailing? I mean it was not known. However,
kun Of writes that Phoenician sailors were more adventurous in
general in pushing westward uh And about around the year
(24:17):
six hundred b C. A Phoenician expedition sponsored by the
pharaoh Necho the second had been reported to have circumnavigated Africa.
And though we don't have the original sources for the
account that I'm about to describe, there are later Roman
quotations of the accounts of Phoenician sailors possibly pushing further
(24:41):
west into the Atlantic in exploration. And one of these
notable sailors was a Carthaginian navigator named him Ilco. That's
h I m I l c O, who lived probably
sometime in the fifth century b c. E. Now, the
Carthaginians were an ancient civilization that was based along the
coast of North Africa. I think their their capital was
(25:04):
in modern day Tunisia. But who expanded too much of
the ancient Mediterranean. And then here I'm going to read
from Cunliffe as he introduces and quotes another ancient source
for for knowledge about Himilco. So Himilco quote, whose report
published long ago in the secret Annals of the Carthaginians,
is selectively quoted in a grossly pretentious poem compiled by
(25:27):
our Roman administrator Rufus Festus Aviennas in the fourth century
a d. A few lines of his Aura maritima will
suffice to give the flavor. And then this quotes lines
three seventy four. To the west of these pillars, Himilco
reports that the swell is boundless, the sea extends widely
(25:49):
the salt water streaks. Fourth, no one has approached these waters.
No one has brought his keel into that sea, because
there are no propelling breezes at sea, and no breath
of Heaven's air aids the ship. Hence, because the mist
cloaks the air with a kind of garment, a cloud
always holds the swell and persists throughout the humid day.
(26:12):
And so that's describing possibly some of the becalmed area
of the North Atlantic, with like within the Gyre region
that we talked about before, you know, surrounded by the currents,
but is very often very still in that middle area
that overlaps with the Sargasso Sea. But then Cunliff goes
on to describe further how Aviennas quotes from him Ilko
(26:34):
to describe his voyage. Uh Cunlift writes Elsewhere he talks
of monsters of the deep and beasts who swim amid
the slow and sluggish crawling ships, and again great fear
of monsters stalks the deep. When the wind falls, the
sluggish liquid of the lazy sea is at a stand still,
while thick seaweed often tops the sea, and the tide
(26:57):
is hindered by the marshy rack. The marshy rack. Oh
yeah um and Kunlaf also says Himilko was evidently not
enamored of his encounter with the ocean. Perhaps perhaps his
vessel was drawn south into the dull drums and reach
the Sargasso Sea, as some commentators have suggested, or perhaps
(27:18):
he reported in this dispiriting way simply to aggrandize his
own achievement and to deter others. Another possibility is that
his original report was embroidered by Aviennus Uh. So we
don't know exactly what he's describing here and if what
he's describing is real, especially since we're only getting it
quoted by a secondary source and we don't have the
(27:38):
original source. But of course it is true. There's the
danger of the dull drums, the calm part of the
Atlantic where you won't have winds to propel your your sales. Uh,
so you can very well get trapped there. That could
well overlap with large stretches of seaweed, the sargassum seaweed
that you would find in the Sargasso Sea. So one
possible interpretation of what we're getting here is that this
(28:00):
ancient Carthaginian sailor him Ilco actually sailed to the Sargasso Sea, survived,
returned to Carthage eventually, and you know, lived to tell
the tale. But again it's worth stressing that modern some
modern scholars are are doubtful. It's hard to know for sure,
but some details line up if they're accurate. You've got
these reports about the marshy rack of seaweed coinciding with
(28:23):
the Doldrums. It it lines up in a kind of
interesting way. And then finally, of course, the mention of
sea monsters right the I wonder if it's possible to
mistake the shadow of a huge floating raft of sargassum
for a sea monster stalking the deep. Again, I don't know,
but it strikes me as possible. Yeah. Yeah, And well,
once you get into discussing sea monsters, of course, as
(28:45):
we've we've explored in the show before, especially looking at
the work of the check ven Douser. Yeah, right on
sea monsters. I believe he pointed out in his book
that you know, at times sea monsters are a manifestation
of uh certainly of of second and third hand accounts
of of actual organisms. Other times their products of the mind,
sometimes their products of of economic or political forces. So
(29:08):
they're the whole host of reasons uh to to speak
the word of the name of the sea monster. But
that's certainly the yeah, the doldrums that seemed to be
described here, and then the uh, the the rack, the muck,
the seaweed here this does sound a lot like the
descriptions modern descriptions of the sargassoc. Oh. And sorry, there's
(29:29):
one thing I didn't clarify, but just to avoid confusion,
because it's not a common word, I had to look
this up. Rack here in this quotation is spelled with
the W W R A C K, And I was like,
what is that referring to? Is that like referring to
like a like a shipwreck, because rack sometimes is an
alternate spelling of rack or wreckage. But also I looked
it up and apparently. It is also just a word
(29:51):
sometimes used to refer to a massive seaweed like green vegetation.
Could be oh, there is a rack with the W. Yeah, okay,
well sometimes it U. I wasn't familiar with the precise definition,
but I totally understood it in the context of the sentence.
It's like, look at this rack, there's no getting through it.
So so certainly you can imagine that the rack would
(30:12):
not be a great place to find yourself as a
human sailor, certainly in in ancient times. But of course
the Iraq is home to a great many organisms, as
we've already alluded to here. So uh for one thing,
you have you have various um micro and macro um epiphytes.
(30:35):
These are organisms that grow on the surface of a
plant and derived derives its moisture and nutrients from the air, rain,
and water. Uh. So you have that's those sorts of
organisms growing there. You have fung gi. You have more
than a hundred species of invertebrates that are known to
uh to to live within the sargassum, over a hundred
species of fish, four species of turtle. Again, and it
(30:56):
kind of spirals out because once you have a certain
amount of of life, uh, fostered within the sargassum, it's
going to attract other things as well, so you'll see
things like sharks showing up, etcetera. So we are not
going to attempt to cover everything that lives in the sargassum,
but we are going to talk about some of the standouts,
because there are some really fun, really interesting, really weird
(31:19):
organisms that call the rack home in the first of
which I want to talk about is the sargassum fish,
also known as the sargassum frog fish. Now, is this
the one that you lured me into this episode with?
Because the first thing that I became aware of when
you were getting interested in sargassum was was that you
came to me and you said, Joe, there is a
(31:40):
fish with hands. Yes, yes, this would be uh, this
would be the sargassum frog fish. Um and uh and
and I'll and I'll explain what I mean by by hands.
And they're not quite hands, but they are enough like
hands that you're committed to get excited um and uh
and yeah, it's probably the most famous sargas some denizen.
(32:01):
It's the species history of history o frog fish of
the family Uh. At Tinninara day and it's the only
species of its genus. So, uh, we'll describe them here,
but also feel free to look up images or video.
I mean, there's nothing quite like seeing video of these uh,
these creatures. I think there's some wonderful national geographic footage.
(32:23):
But also the Weird House Cinema selection for tomorrow also
will feature some actual footage of this creature right at
the top. Um So, the uh, the sargassum fish grows
to around twenty centimeters in lengths, so about seven point
eight inches. And I should I guess I should say,
first of all, they generally have this appearance that you'll
(32:45):
find with other frog fish um and uh and and
they're related to uh to the angler fish of the deep. Uh.
So they have these upturned mouths, which kind of give
them kind of this uh, the frowny face, look, this
kind of froggy appearance and uh and and so that
that's the first thing to drive home about them. So
(33:07):
they have that that kind of body that I think
at number of you can can imagine, but they sometimes
sort of think of it as the drawbridge jaw. Yes, yes,
that's a good way of describing a drawbridge jaw, and
of course, like like pretty much all fish, you know,
they're they're going to consume by by lunging and inhaling,
you know, pulling their their prey rapidly into their mouth.
(33:27):
Um their masters. These particular fish, though, uh, the sargassom
fish are masters of camouflage, at least within the sargassum environment,
because they've adapted to physically look like the sargassum, complete
with fleshy appendages that look like weed. I've seen some
of the some of the appendages have even been compared
(33:48):
to organisms that live within the weed um. So they
just they just they look like they're just a part
of the environment. You'll see images or even footage sometimes
of the sargassum fish hiding in the seaweed and you
really cannot pick them out with a human eye. I
think at some point I watched a documentary or part
of a documentary that had some of these in it,
(34:09):
and it was one of those like you know, trick
shots where they show you the shot and then it's
like there are three sargassum fish in the shot, you
can't see them at all, and then has to like
circle them or zoom in on them or something. I
think I've seen the same one. Yeah. Um. But of
course it's not just their physical structure and initial coloration.
The other cool thing about them is they can further
(34:29):
adjust their coloration from dark browns and greens to light
browns and greens to complete the illusion, to to fine
tune it so that they blend in you know, seemingly completely. Um.
And they can do this quite rapidly as well. This
is important for the sargassum fish because again it is
a voracious hunter, but also it's the jungle baby, so
(34:51):
you know they're they're also they also have to be
on guard against other predators, so it also helps protect them.
Now they let's get to the hands, so if you will,
uh so their pants, their pelvic fins uh, you know
the fins up front. They have nine to eleven rays
uh in them and they're stalked, essentially forming what act
(35:13):
like clause. Basically, they can use these things again they
look like clause, they look like fish clause, and they
can use these to grip objects, and they use these
to clamber over and through the seaweed. Okay, so they
can use them to grip objects, not in the sense
of like like our fingers where you would manipulate objects freely.
But they can grip things in the sense of like
(35:36):
sort of pushing against surfaces. Right. Yeah, they're not gonna
be able to use an iPhone, they can't play the
piano worth of dying, but but they can use these appendages.
You have to sort of grip and push through things,
which is gonna be vitally important when you're hanging out
in the sargassum like little gravoid spines. Yeah, so they're
really cool. Definitely look up. I mean they're beyond cool.
(35:58):
They're a little creepy looking. I highly recommended checking them out. Um. So, so,
obviously the adults live in the mats and their eggs
are placed there as well, but the larvae develop in
the water columns between fifty and six deep um. And
you might think, well that, I guess the sargassum environment
(36:18):
then is just no place for for kids, right um.
And this is certainly the case, especially since the sargassum
fish is more than happy to eat them as well.
So they're in They're not only incredibly voracious, but their
notorious cannibals. I was reading about some of the studies
where they've they've caught sargassum fish and they've they've looked
inside at their bellies and they'll find like multiple juveniles.
(36:41):
You know, they'll find some juveniles and they just they'll
just just gobble them up delicious. Yeah. So again, just
a fabulous fish. Just it's everything about it is uh
is both beautiful and frightening, uh in just the right proportions. Now,
they're not the only creature that that that lives are again,
and they're not the only creature that that takes a
(37:02):
sargassum as part of its uh you know, official or
unofficial name. For instance, there's the sargassum pipe fish. This
is a species of pipe fish that makes its home
in the sargassum mats uh. And like all pipe fish
and seahorses, the male carries the egg. Um. They're just
into these elongated um, you know, beautiful fish with that
kind of signature, uh seahorsey head now. Um. Just briefly
(37:25):
a couple of other organisms. Well, first, in general should
say that that the Sargasso Sea in particular is a
spawning site for various eels, uh, including threatened and endangered eels.
But speaking of decapods, there is also worth our consideration.
The sargassum swimming crab or U Portunists say, I, uh,
(37:46):
this is uh just one variety of crab you'll find
in sargassum mats, but it's an impressive one and a
species adapted to blend into the environment. They have an
orange brown colorization that apparently matches up with the sargassum
pretty well. And as the name implies, they're more adapted
for swimming than walking. U. The fourth pair of legs
(38:06):
are modified into paddle like structures. Now, crabs, of of course,
are noted for walking sideways, so you might wonder how
does it swim. Well, they tend to swim sideways as well. Uh,
and apparently they're quite fast. They depend on a mix
of active and passive hunting, so they'll they'll actively chase
after something again sideways uh to catch it, but they'll
(38:28):
also fall back on that that sort of ambush hunting
within the jungle of the sargassum. Yeah. Now, in addition
to these organisms that spend all or most of their
lives in the sargassum, there are also organisms that use
sargassum as a sort of like a stepping stone during
(38:50):
their migration patterns. One example that's often referenced would be
young sea turtles. Yeah, and I've also heard that it's
important to even like migratory birds for species. Again, it's
it's it's an oasis in the wastes, an oasis in
the desert of the sea. Thank thank so. Now, earlier
(39:12):
we we alluded to the sargassum being not not only
this this bountiful environment, but also potentially a problem, a
problem for humans and the sort of human likes and
dislikes concerning beaches, but also just for the environment as
a whole. As the Ocean Foundation points out, it's ecologically
(39:34):
important the sargassum, but it doesn't mean it doesn't have
some downsides, especially when you're dealing with large volumes. Right,
And this is something that's become especially a problem within
just the last decade or so. Actually, it can really
be dated to a year in particular from what from
everything we've been reading for the year two thousand eleven.
(39:54):
Starting around two thousand eleven, something started happening with sargass
them in the Atlantic Ocean where there was a sudden
increase that has gone on in many years since then,
of of sargassum inundations where beaches and shore lines along
areas in the Caribbean, along the coast of Florida, along
(40:16):
places in the coast of the northern coast of South
America would just be caked with sargassum, like they're just
mounds and mounds of seaweed piling up to the point
that it in some cases would make these shores unusable
for what humans have been using them for, usually in
in the years beforehand. Yeah, if if any of you
(40:37):
out there are are snorkelers, or are you know, related
to our friends with snorkeling enthusiasts, then you've you've probably
heard about the blight of sargassum, about the disappointment of off, say,
you know, reaching a popular snorkeling area and finding that
there's just sargassum everywhere, um, you know. So it's in
(40:57):
particular one of the things that the Ocean Foundation points out,
huge rafts of it can actually smother other sea grasses
and even coral reefs. Um. You know. Granted, coral reefs
are facing uh a number of problems, um, you know,
and are and uh and we've gone into that in
past episodes. But but certainly this could disrupt your ability
(41:18):
to even properly view them as a as a tourist
in the ocean, as a as a snorkeler, um, you know,
out there trying to to observe this natural habitat. Uh
it can also this is interesting this this has brought
up as well. Apparently sargassum can serve as a means
of transport for invasive species. Though UM, I honestly wonder
(41:40):
if this at all compares to human enabled invasive species transport.
It seems like, um it almost wouldn't matter compared to
what humans can and have done. Uh you know, importing
species like the lion fish into regions that um, that
that are not balanced enough to to contain them. Well, yes,
(42:00):
but I would also say that there I think there
is at least a strong likelihood that human behavior is
a major contributor to these these new build ups of
sargassum in the last Yeah, and we'll and we'll get
into into more of that in just a second. Um,
just a few more points here that the Ocean Foundation
made Uh. Sargassum of course can prevent boats and fishermen
(42:22):
from setting out to sea. It can also prevent sea
turtles from making it to nest in these cases as well.
So you know, again you have it massing up on
the beach. In particular, if it's um, you know, a
certain amount of that is arguably good for the beach,
but if you have too much of it, yeah, it's
gonna actually interfere potentially in a sea turtle's ability to
(42:44):
come on shore lady eggs and then have the hatchlings
be able to properly get back out to sea again
in in an appropriate amount of time. And if it
masses on the beach, the sargassum it, if it's not
removed in time, it can produce hydrogen sulfide, which can
have a made your can have major detrimental effects on
coastal ecosystems. Yeah, I mean, it can have all kinds
(43:05):
of negative effects on the wildlife itself. I mean, one
would be like if it doesn't reach the beach, if
you're just talking about it still being in the water.
Big blooms of algal organisms in the water can have
downstream effects when the blooms eventually die and then there's
all of this dead, decomposing material in the water, and
(43:26):
then the decomposition of that material ends up robbing the
water of dissolved oxygen, which in turn leads to these
big fish die offs and die offs of other organisms
because there's not enough oxygen in the water for them
to breathe. Yeah, and also all that decomposition in the
water can promote harmful blooms of bacteria and other microbes.
I guess the way to to to think of it
(43:48):
is it's basically like spiraling imbalance in the ecosystem. And
uh and and uh it's it's place in this. This
this the cascade of imbalance. Now to get kind of
a I guess sort of a bird's eye or I
guess satellite view of things. Um. I found this pretty helpful.
(44:11):
I was looking at a July twenty nineteen article from
NASA Goddard. They utilize the satellite images to observe the
Great Atlantic Sargassum belt. Uh so at this point, based
on simulations, they confirmed that its shape was due to
ocean currents and that it can grow large enough so
as to blanket the surface of the Tropical Atlantic from
(44:33):
the west coast of Africa to the Gulf of Mexico.
Major blooms have occurred in every year between twenty eleven
and again this was a July articles, so that's as
far up as it went at the time. UH, with
the exception of which this was apparently UH this year
was impacted by unusually low seed populations during the winter,
(44:56):
but otherwise eleven onward, it's been sargassum season. Prior to
most of the free floating sargassum in the ocean was
primarily found in patches around the Gulf of Mexico and
the Sargasso Sea. But then something changed, something seemingly in
the biochemistry the ocean. Obviously, you know, people were asking
(45:18):
a lot of questions about climate change UH and and
ultimately I guess the reality is is complicated, but basically yes,
it's pointed out by a doctor Paula Bontempi of NASA's
Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry Program, the ocean's biochemistry is changing
due to a mix of natural and human forces, and
it seems to be leading to an ecosystem shift with
(45:41):
important implications for marine life and human life. Since we
depend on many of the species in question and live
in in in many of the environments that are impacted. UH.
Climate change is certainly a key aspect of this as
it impacts precipitation and ocean circulation, but increased water temperatures
typically don't seem to be the cause. It's these other causes.
(46:03):
But again, uh, climate change is very much part of
the issue. I don't want to make it sound like
it's not. Yeah, if you were. If you want to
read more in depth about this research, there's a really
good article in The Atlantic by Ed Young from July
nineteen called hy waves of seaweed have been smothering Caribbean beaches. Again,
this from July nineteen by Ed Young. Uh, that's worth
(46:25):
looking up, and it gets into a lot of the
difficulty and uncertainty in trying to figure out exactly what
the underlying factors leading to this change that we first
saw in the year two thousand eleven was establishing this
this huge belt of sargassum that was not there previously.
And what we want to be very clear, this Atlantic
sargassum belt is different from the sargassum in the Sargasso Sea.
(46:48):
The Sargasso Sea is further north in the North Atlantic
off the east coast of of like the United States,
whereas this would be something that stretches more between Brazil
and Africa. In fact, one of the things that Ed
Young writes about in this article was the very idea
of the satellite photos that you were talking about that
one of the fortunate things for studying sargassum blooms on
(47:11):
the large scale is that sargassum reflects more infrared light
than the seawater around it, So when you look down
with satellites, sargassum patches can appear as hot spots in
the ocean that can be seen from space. Young sites, Uh,
the researcher named Jim Gower of the Fisheries and Oceans
Canada for for doing this satellite research. But yeah, the
(47:35):
the satellite photos found that the bloom really began in
April of two thousand eleven, which correlates with you know
these times when these pile ups on the beaches, the
sargassum inundations really started becoming a problem that people noticed.
But they started noticing the blooms off the coast of
Brazil in the satellite images from two thousand eleven. And
(47:57):
then Young also points to research by someone named Ming
Chi Wang from the University of South Florida who, along
with her colleagues, they've basically established that, yeah, this bloom
is just going to be an ongoing yearly thing now,
uh that that it's coming and it's probably not going
to stop. Though. One of the interesting things this article
gets into is a delay between the proximate causes that
(48:21):
are likely leading to the blooms and then when the
blooms show up within you know, what we can see
with our satellites or what's piling up on our beaches.
Because a couple of the factors that have been identified
as likely candidates leading to these blooms. One is um
is water being discharged from the Amazon River. You know,
(48:41):
it's coming out of South America. UM. And this water
coming out of the Amazon River is probably being especially
saturated with nutrients from agriculture that's happening all along the
Amazon basin, and so this is like it's like for
fertilizer that is flooding into the ocean, and then of
(49:03):
course that is feeding blooms of of this macro algae.
And then there are other factors they get into that
are probably contributing, such as like what the different temperatures
are this year. It's the same thing you were talking
about that um that climate change doesn't seem to be
the cause of it in the sense of increasing ocean
temperatures lead to uh, lead to macro alogy blooms, because
(49:25):
that doesn't appear to be the case, but downstream other
effects of climate change are very likely contributing to this.
It's just not the temperature of the water itself. Another
factor that they're talking about is access to the seed
populations of of seaweed. It's like, how many patches of
seaweed are there leftover that survived the winter of the
(49:47):
previous year and can act as a kind of seed
for the regrowth of the seaweed every new season. Yeah,
because I think it kind of brings back that that
point about the neumaticis having a like a year lifespan,
so there's gonna be a certain amount of crossover as
well here from one year to the next. Um. I
was impressed one of the quotes you pulled from from
(50:09):
the eight young article just about how many tons of
seaweed we're talking about here? Yeah, yeah, yeah, So the estimate,
I think this would be referring to the year previous
to when this article was written, So it was published
in twenty nineteen, so I think this would be referring
to the summer of eighteen during June, when the Sargassin
Belt was at at its most fruitful, it was estimated
(50:31):
to contain twenty two million tons of seaweed. And then
there's even a clarification later in the article that that
estimate is probably low since the resolution of the satellite
camera that's taking the infrared imagery to establish that number,
it has like a minimum sort of pixel distance resolution,
(50:51):
so it can only see patches that show up at
a minimum resolution of something like a kilometer. I think
it was. It could be long about that. Uh, doing
that just stuff memory, but I think that's what it was.
And uh. And so like patches that are smaller than that,
with which there are probably plenty, they're not even really
showing up on the imaging. So that's a lot of seaweed.
That's a lot of seaweed, folks, And there's a lot
(51:13):
and that's ending up on a lot of it's ending
up on the shores eventually. But one thing that is
worth stressing again is that while researchers have probably identified
some very good candidates for the explanations of of these
blooms and inundations of sargassum in the last decade or so.
There's still some uncertainty. There's like stuff we don't know
about what what could be leading to it and what
(51:35):
could be the limiting and contributing factors. Anyway, that the
article by ed Young is a really good read. You
should look it up. Yeah, absolutely, I recommend that one. Now.
You know, in the past, I think it's been brought
up when we're dealing with invasive species or species that
are out of balance, one of the best things that
you can do is develop an appetite for that species,
(51:58):
uh in human being. Now, I don't I don't think
anybody's making an argument that that could um make a
difference with the sargassum. But it is again worth noting
that sargassum is something that humans can eat. Uh. We
we mentioned that already, and I found a wonderful blog
titled Eat the Weeds with Green Dean. Um. So his
(52:20):
name is Dean, but he's Green Dean. Get it and
the blogs. The blog is titled Sargassum Sea Vegetable And
in this post, Green Dean points to a few different
culinary traditions that have recipes for sargassum. Uh. Though he
points out that given the different species. Basically, it's sargassum
is going to quote very in taste and texture, So
(52:42):
there is no one way to cook your local species. Uh.
He says that some amount of experimentation is going to
be required, but basically he goes through different cuisines in
this post, points out that sometimes it's consumed fresh. Other
times it's cooked, saying coconut milk or vinegar or lemon juice.
Other Times it's smoke dried, or it's boiled. Sometimes it's
(53:04):
even sweetened and put into steam buns. Sometimes it's cooked
with fish. Basically, they're just numerous ways to approach it,
but it's it's worth checking out. The link I recommended
it said, eat the weeds dot com you'll find a
post on the sargasm sea vegetable. Um. I'm not sure
I've ever had sargassum in a dish. Maybe I have
(53:25):
and I just wasn't alert to it, But now I
feel like I really, I really want to have it.
I don't know if I have either. I mean, I've
had a number of seaweed salads, but I don't know
what species were in them. Yeah, well, I know some
basic things. I mean, I know like combo and combo,
of course, is a seaweed based food additive that is
an amazing source of umami flavor. It's it's it's almost
(53:46):
like raw msg. It's that it's good stuff um But
but yeah, other than that, I don't know. I mean,
I've had I've had like various seaweed salads at Japanese
restaurants that have had different types of seaweeds, some that
looked kind of like orange around, like like some species
of sargassum do So maybe I have I don't know. Huh, yeah,
I think I've I've only I know of at least
(54:07):
one time, had like a sampler of seaweed salads from
the Japanese restaurant. But in those cases, I think they
were all still rather green. They didn't have um any
kind of darker coloration. So I don't know. I'm gonna
look for it now now it is on it is
it is something I want to specifically try out, knowing
that it is sargassum. I just looked it up to
(54:28):
make sure. I I thought that combo was not sargassum,
and it is not. Comb is a type of kelp. Well, obviously,
we'd love to hear from everyone out there about this
topic in general, but but specifically on this question of
the cooking and the consumption of sargassum. If you've if
you you definitely know you've had it, and you've had
in a particular way that was yummy or or or
(54:50):
or not yummy, let us know we would love to
hear from you, and likewise, just in you know, in general,
any feedback about about the various organisms we've discussed here
surrounding sar assam or uh sargassom, seaweed itself. Perhaps you're
a snorkeler and have your you know, two cents you
want to throw in, uh right in, we'd like to
hear from you. In the meantime, if you would like
(55:11):
to hear other episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind,
you can find us in the Stuff to Blow your
Mind podcast feed and you know where to find that
just wherever you get podcasts UM subscribe if you can
rate us, if the platform allows you to um, you
know it gives us. I guess a good rating is
what we're asking for. You know, that supposedly helps us out,
But in general, we're just thankful if you're if you're
(55:33):
listening to the show and uh, you know right in.
Let us know what you like about the show, what
what you would like to hear from us in the future,
what other topics you would like us to consider. Yes, absolutely,
uh so, I guess we're closing out here, so huge
thanks as always to our wonderful audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.
If you would like to get in touch with us,
as as Rob just asked there, to let us know
(55:55):
feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a
topic for a future episode, or just to say hi,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my
(56:16):
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