Seaweed Invading the Beautiful Beach
The day before we were glad that the beach in front of our condo was still pristine. (The beach front about 300 yards to the south had, however, some reddish-brown seaweed strewn about.) Imagine our shagrin when we woke the next morning, went out for the obligatory morning shell gathering, and were greeted by the entire beach covered with icky, smelly, gross to walk through seaweed! The culprit was in fact Sargassum. Some species are used for medicinal purposes, but its entrance to Vanderbilt Beach in Naples was not welcome.
Oh well, we tried to make the best of this. Examination of the mass of stuff led to some discoveries: Mostly seaweed, but an occasional shell intwined in the mess, and, yes, a dead smelly fish or two. Fortunately the seagulls had already picked most of the "morsels" from the matted carpet of red. The kids did find about a two foot section of clean sand between the edge of the freshly deposited seaweed and the end of the breaking waves. Kids will always adapt, it seems.
Supposedly, the seaweed invasion is good for the ecology of the beach. The weed, when deposited on the natural dunes, prevents erosion and provides rich organic matter to help the growth of dune grasses, etc. But, the protected sea turtles are not known to cross a matt of this icky stuff, so that is a negative.
We still loved the time on the beach, seaweed or not. We all 'adapted', as the picture below shows. But, it still was gross to walk through, smelled at times, and made us all appreciate the days when the sands were free of this Sargassum!
