Volume 19, Number 3 • May-June 2001

The Mysterious Seaweed Sea

The Sargasso Sea, where the mystery of eel spawning takes place, is something of a mystery itself. A vast area (some two million square miles) in the middle of the Atlantic, it was rumored throughout history to be filled with abandoned ships that were trapped on its nearly windless surface. The excerpt below from the November 1998 issue of Smithsonian Magazine (www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/smithsonian/issues98/nov98/ sargasso.html) shows just how unique it is.

Out in the Atlantic, strange creatures make their home among seaweed in a floating lens of warm water. When Columbus reached the deep blue waters of the central North Atlantic, he thought he was very close to shore. After all, there was suddenly an abundance of plant life in the form of a floating algae, which he called, simply, "weed." His sailors, meanwhile, feared that their ships would become irretrievably entangled in the stuff.

Their fears were misplaced – as were Columbus's hopes. The weed – which scientists ultimately dubbed sargassum, after a Portuguese word for it – is neither sturdy nor abundant enough to ensnare a ship of any size. And even the westernmost boundaries of the Sargasso Sea – a two-million-square-mile ellipse of deep-blue water adrift in the North Atlantic – lie many hundreds of miles from the North American shore.

Defined by a floating lens of warm, exceptionally clear water, the Sargasso Sea drifts, its location determined by the changing ocean currents that, flowing in a clockwise promenade, form its perimeter. The algae that riddles its surface is actually a deceptively lush veneer to a stretch of ocean that is relatively devoid of life at deeper levels. But even in this ocean desert, there is an intricate web of life that has adapted to existence among the weed.

Top of Page

		Contents of this issue	Other Issues