USVI-On-Line

Growing up in Atlantic City, from time to time the ocean would be pretty much inundated with seaweed. Once in a while, there would also be swarms of jellyfish clogging our swimming waters. In our many years of visits to St. John, thankfully, we have never found either of these to be an issue. On our recent trip to the island, we awoke one day to see something puzzling in Pillsbury Sound; long trails and patches of some floating brown stuff, that locals recognized as sargassum, a seaweed. The following photo isn't as sharp as I would wish, due to the heavy Sahara dust that day, but you can see the seaweed floating in a long trail and patch just above the Two Brothers:
According to the following article in the Virgin Islands Daily news, the sargassum infestation worsened significantly since we left, with the seaweed showing up in swimming waters, and depositing in smelly piles along territory beaches:
http://virginislandsdailynews.com/news/ ... -1.1773050
St. John is mentioned, so I would be interested to hear from folks on island over the last week or so as to what they observed. According to the article, sargassum has only started arriving in the VI since 2011; perhaps warming ocean waters, or a change in the prevailing winds and currents is to blame. FWIW, this September, and the preceding twelve month period, have been the warmest globally since record keeping began in 1880. The seaweed infestation is probably only a late summer/beginning of fall thing, and according to the article, should be swept away shortly. It's certainly a new one in my book.

All the best,

Kevin

I was on St. John the last week of July and first week of August, and saw large amounts of sargassum seaweed piled on the beaches in Coral Bay. Specifically, Miss Lucy's beach, the beach at Shipwreck, and Drunk Bay. I don't remember any on the North Shore beaches.

Sargassum is a huge problem on the beaches in Bermuda, another of our favorite vacation spots. Many of the beaches have special sand plows that are used to collect the seaweed nightly and dispose of it (where I have no idea).

We were sailing the second week of September and saw a ton of this seaweed. It was blowing from east to west with the wind. It was spread over a large area and did not hinder our swimming or snorkeling, but it was around. It would definitely pile up on a windward beach. We're down Thursday sailing and onto STJ on Saturday. I'll let you know what we see.

Cheers, RickG

The University of Southern Mississippi has a reporting website set up to collect data on this phenomenon, if anyone is interested in reporting their sightings;

http://www.usm.edu/gcrl/sargassum/

Reporting Site: Pelagic Sargassum in the Caribbean

During 2011, massive quantities of pelagic sargassum occurred throughout the Caribbean, impacting aquatic resources, fisheries, shorelines, waterways, and tourism. A similar event is occuring in 2014.

In the effort to better understand critical aspects of this phenomenon, this website serves as a data collection center to accommodate reports of large quantities of pelagic sargassum observed within the region during 2014. The website provides easy access for data entry and represents a service to those interested in contributing to the information database. Data provided to this site will be used by Gulf Coast Research Laboratory (GCRL) scientists and colleagues throughout the region to identify the source and examine the movements and causes of this extraordinary event.

Your participation is essential to this work. Please use this form to report your observations. Thank you."

On October 10 there was a lot right off of Blue Cobblestone. After hiking to Ram's Head I got in to cool off, but the seaweed was gross. There was a little at Trunk and some at White Bay Beach on Jost, but not too much at either of those places. I don't remember seeing it before either.

Thanks for posting these articles - its very timely for us. I wasn't aware of this problem until now. I will be sure to send in the sighting form.

We are staying on Virgin Gorda this week and have seen a lot of Sargassum. Fortunately, its not on the beaches we've visited or seen on this trip (Savannah, Mahoe, Spring Bay). However, it was piled thick and high on Biras Creek Resort's main beach on Long Bay. We took a tour of the resort this week and they took us down to the beach. They had a crew of guys shoveling it up and a backhoe picking up piles of it. It was awful and smelled bad too. I would hate to have spent the $$$ to stay at Biras, then not be able to use the beach.

We also saw some at the dock area at Gun Creek and washed up on shore near the Virgin Gorda airport.

We hiked up to Gorda Peak and ate at Hog Heaven, both of which give you wonderful sweeping views out to sea. We could see huge clumps of sargassum floating in the sea. Some was clumped into little "islands" and some was in very long "stripes. It looks like there is still a lot to wash up somewhere. VERY thankful there is none on the beach where we are staying!

On the flight down last week I could see patches of it from my plane window about an hour out, along with a couple cruise ships. I don't think it's all that bad. Just think of the weedlines to fish loaded with Mahi.,Tuna...Baby fish ....

While it's true that there hasn't been sargassum at this level in many years, it's not a totally new thing. Comparing notes with other Virgin Islanders of my generation (oldish) we remember this more than once in the 1960s, and even earlier...

Although it might not be pretty, Sargassum, an algae, is very important to many juvenile fish and sea turtles. Loggerhead hatchlings from nests in the Carolinas make their way out to the Sargasso Sea where large patches of Sargassum can be found. They spend their time there eating and growing before they head out to the open ocean. For the fish, it is a safe place to grow and stay hidden from their predators. The Chinese use it as an herbal remedy for phlegm.

Howdy Kevin, as you know we were just on island...specifically October 12-22. We saw that exact same seaweed when we were driving down Gifft Hill Road and wondered what it was. You have been a fountain of information lately! First with storm updates, and now this

We saw lots of seaweed on the beaches but thought it was becasue of the storm; the waters were rough and churned up and there was just a lot of junk on the beaches.

Just an update- I was out today and the seaweed has gotten significantly better at some of the places listed in this post.

If you have kids, have em wash some fresh sargassum in a bucket of water and see who lives in it.....

Just make sure the kids wash it in salt water, please!

I don't ever recall seeing so much of it in my lifetime. Quite a site to see it floating across the harbor in the morning. Everyone flying in always mention seeing bunches of it on the way here.

Any recent updates on STJ beach conditions? Is it still heavy on north shore, haulover, etc?