Seaweed in the VI

[mindehankins]

The only Northshore beaches we've been to are Soloman and Honeymoon - yesterday - none at all. Kiddel, Vies and Haulover South had some, and Great Lameshur had a lot. It didn't keep me out of the water, but skeeved Blaine out. There are moon jellies, too, some places they're very thick, but they don't sting. And sea walnuts were thick as tapioca at Haulover South but again, they don't sting.

[Coconuts]

From this article by Jenn over at NOSJ, the sargassum has not only failed to leave the territory, but is thicker than ever, and on a number of the beaches.

http://newsofstjohn.com/2014/12/08/whats-beach/

The water temperature recordings in Lameshur bay continue to top out at 84 degrees F, which strikes me as warmer than usual at this time of year; I remember measuring 79F in late afternoon on the North Shore beaches in January.

http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/physoc ... interval=6

[Edit, Tuesday: The sargassum on Cruz Bay Beach has been picked up, leaving that beach pretty clear:

http://www.on-stjohn.com/2014/12/09/no- ... n-cruz-bay]

All the best,

Kevin

[ColoradoMom]

Hiked to Solomon and Honeymoon today, December 10th. Seaweed in the water was heavy in certain clumps but you could swim past it. Seaweed on the sand was two feet wide and stretched the length of the beach.
Also at Haulover North the water was FULL of it and lots on the beach. By the Beach Bar someone had raked it up. Maybe, like Liamsaunt mentioned is the case in Bermuda, there will be a new job or jobs opening on St John!

[Coconuts]

Having started this thread back when I noticed the first sargassum patches in Pillsbury Sound in September, I though that I would provide a couple of more recent updates. NOSJ and Tradewinds both reported fairly heavy sargassum around week two of December, but when we arrived in week three, the beaches that we hit looked clear. I can't say that there weren't beaches that were impacted, and between villa projects and car issues, we mostly hit north shore beaches late in the day, but the sargassum seemed to have gone away, and we assumed that this would remain true through the remainder of the winter season.

We had a chance to get down again this week, and can report that Trunk had a lot of the stuff late today. There was a foot or so wide line of the stuff at the high water mark (only a few inches high, though), and it was everywhere in the water. You could smell it on the beach, although it wasn't especially objectionable (we weren't there during the mid-day sun, though). There were no dense mats in the water, but the stuff was still everywhere, and you couldn't avoid brushing against it. It clearly impacts the aesthetic experience of what was usually a very pristine beach, and I will edit this post as we hit more beaches. Sargassum used to be a rare and short-lived phenomenon (we had never before seen it in annual visits since 1999, and much more frequently since 2010), but according to old timers, the 2014 sargassum bloom must have set records in both amount and duration. It isn't clear if it even has a season now, with lots of the stuff still here four months after it first arrived. If this is the new normal, St. John's pristine and picture perfect beaches just dropped several notches. I'm very much hoping that this isn't the case.

According to NASA and NOAA, 2014 was the warmest year since record keeping began, 135 years ago, and ten of the warmest years on record have occurred since 1998, the year that an especially intense El Nino gave data cherry-pickers grounds to claim that warming had "paused" (it hasn't). 2005 saw a massive Caribbean coral bleaching event due to very warm ocean waters. I haven't seen any papers providing casual links between increased sea surface temperatures and sargassum blooms, but I would be surprised if they weren't in some way connected.

I hope the stuff leaves soon, and stays away.

All the best,

Kevin

[P-600]

It came in again yesterday morning in hart bay. My husband ran choc hole beach today and said it was pretty bad there. It's back for sure.

[mls10]

We saw big streams of it between STJ and Little St. James Monday. There was some in the water and on the beach Tuesday at Maho. Yesterday, Wednesday, Trunk had a lot of raked up seaweed high on the beach, but the water was spectacularly gorgeous.