PALM BEACH, Fla. — Researchers with the University of South Florida say the worst of sargassum season is behind us.
"It was all on the floor and just floating all over," Liz Sanderson, who is visiting from New York, said."It's not pretty I wish that they would clean it up some. Somebody should come around every day and take out some of it."
Sanderson said she's been in town for about 10 days and heads home on Friday.
"The other day I came home I had so much seaweed in my hair especially in this kind of hair, it was stuck to it, it was bad, it was bad," Sanderson said.
But there may be clearer conditions on the horizon.
Dr. Chuanmin Hu, professor of oceanography at the University of South Florida's Optical Oceanography Lab, said the sargassum belt spreads from West Africa to the Gulf of Mexico.
Hu said the portion in the Gulf that would impact Florida has decreased by 75% from May to June.
"So for Florida the sargassum season is likely, very likely to be over this year," Hu said. "If the source region has a reduction already, imagine what we'll have in Florida."
"So where did it go? What happened to it?" WPTV reporter Joel Lopez asked.
"It died. It either dissipated into small clumps or sink to the ocean floor," Hu said.
Researchers speculate wind played a role in the quick decrease and predict the mass will keep getting smaller.
In February, Hu said the size of the bloom at the time was about 1,1000 square miles and had the potential to make it a record year for the seaweed.
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"That's excellent news," Sanderson said. "I like to be out here and see the beauty; I don't want to see the seaweed."
Beachgoer Divya Rathore, who is also visiting from New York, said the seaweed is a good thing.
"In upstate New York we don't go to the beaches. We got lakes, so we don't have seaweed up there," Rathore said. "I was kind of sad to hear seaweed season is ending cause I would want to see more seaweed or whatever else in the environment."
She said she enjoys learning about plants and hasn't had much experience with sargassum.
"Even if it's gross and smells bad I would still want to see it because it's part of the ecosystem in Florida," Rathore said.
Although there has been a decrease in the sargassum out at sea, researchers say we will still see small amounts at the beach.
Hu said from May to June there has been an increase of less than 10% in the west Atlantic portion of the sargassum belt.
