Saturday Morning Confusion: What's that smell?

A massive seaweed blob packed with bacteria and plastic could be generating a "pathogen storm" in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, a new study has found.

Originating in the Sargasso Sea in the North Atlantic Ocean, green/brown algae known as Sargassum have become a growing problem for beachgoers around the world in recent years, as large chunks of the algae have washed ashore. 

NASA projects that this year's Sargassum seaweed bloom along the Caribbean and eastern Florida coastlines will be the largest ever recorded, with the bulk of it arriving in June and July. and putting cities on the eastern seaboard at risk of being either swallowed up or dissolved in a giant green blob!

This stinks!!!!!

 An enormous stretch of seaweed measuring 5,000 miles wide is set to bring stench, pests, and bacteria to the beaches of Florida and Mexico!

The "Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt" is a massive bloom of brown algae that stretches from the coast of West Africa to the Gulf of Mexico. (It's like the world has a belt!)

It is the largest seaweed bloom in the world — weighing approximately 20 million tons — and is visible from outer space.

This year's bloom is the biggest on record for the month of March, and it's expected to grow from here, peaking in June or July. Scientists are increasingly concerned about the impacts of the algae.

It's important to note that seaweed is usually fairly innocuous and actually has benefits like providing habitats for fish and absorbing carbon dioxide. But that's when it's out in the open ocean.

Sargassum, like the bloom spanning about twice the width of the US right now, could wreak havoc on beaches as ocean currents push the brown algae toward land.

Because once the seaweed reaches the shore, "the [blooms] degrade water quality, they smell bad, they attract insects and bacteria, they chase away tourists. 

It's a bad impact on the economy," Chuanmin Hu, professor of oceanography at the University of Miami, said to us!