The maps below show Sargassum abundance, with warm colors representing high abundance. On Feb 28th we predicted that during March 2019 large amounts of Sargassum would continue to be found in the entire Caribbean Sea (CS) and around Loop Current (LC), and during April 2019 the amount of “new” Sargassum transported from the Central West Atlantic (CWA) to the CS would decrease. Observations during March 2019 confirmed this prediction. Following the pathway of the LC and Gulf Stream, Sargassum beaching has also been reported along the east coast of Florida. Currently, the amount of Sargassum in the CWA is considerably lower than in Mar 2018, suggesting lower amount of transport (than Apr-May 2018) to the CS and the amount in the in the CS may decrease slightly from Mar 2019.

Wang, M., and C. Hu (2017), Predicting Sargassum blooms in the Caribbean Sea from MODISobservations, Geophys. Res. Lett., 44, 3265–3273, doi:10.1002/ 2017GL072932.