![]() “We’ll be paying extra attention and making sure everybody washes their hands, and doesn’t touch their faces after the cleanup. Sargassum on the sand at Juan Dolio Beach, near San Pedro de Macoris, Dominican Republic, last month. The group is hosting a beach cleanup on Saturday to mark next week’s World Ocean Day, and recruits will be taking precautions including thick gloves, sanitizers and long-handled grabbers to avoid direct contact with the materials they remove. That’s so scary,” said Sophie Ringel, founder of the non-profit Clean Miami Beach. And now even more than that, there’s harmful bacteria too. “It’s very alarming in the first place to see it on the beaches, and alarming to see all the plastic that is entangled in it. That’s become a worry for many, from municipal crews charged with clearing the washed-up seaweed from Florida’s beaches to make them more attractive for vacationers, to the tourists themselves and teams of environmentally conscious volunteers who fill trash sacks with washed up detritus. In particular, caution should be exercised regarding the harvest and processing of sargassum biomass until the risks are explored more thoroughly,” he said. “We really want to make the public aware of these associated risks. He said the seaweed belt stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to the African coast provided the perfect breeding ground for “omnivorous” strains of the bacteria that target both plant and animal life, and associated “microbial flora” potentially harboring potent levels of pathogens. “Our lab work showed that these Vibrio are extremely aggressive and can seek out and stick to plastic within minutes,” said Tracy Mincer, assistant professor of biology at FAU’s Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute and Harriet L Wilkes Honors College. Samples tested from the Caribbean and Sargasso Sea within the Atlantic were abundant with plastic debris, which interacted with the algae and bacteria to create a “perfect pathogen storm implications for both marine life and public health”. The alarming discovery by marine biologists at Florida Atlantic University (FAU) lends a dangerous new aspect to the brown seaweed onslaught, which is already threatening to spoil the state’s busy summer tourism season as coatings of decaying goop exude a pungent aroma akin to that of rotting eggs.Įven more worrying, the researchers say, is the role of ocean pollution in the proliferation of the bacteria, which can cause disease and death if a person gets infected.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |