Transmillennial

Recently, the east Florida coast has been plagued by massive seaweed blooms throughout most of the summer. It’s particularly bad at Jetty Park this week. The blooms are not natural ; the hypertrophy of the algae is caused by the nutrient we put into the water. The weed is called gulf weed or sea-holly or sargasso weed. There is a particular concentration of the weed on the shore east of Jetty Park. My amateur hydrodynamical explanation is that the inshore southerly current along the coast is driven out to sea by the twin jetties enclosing the Port Canaveral inlet, and then forms an eddy south of Jetty Park. The state owns all its beaches seaward of the Mean High Water Mark ; that’s where the seaweed is. The seaweed is therefore the state’s responsibiliity. The state has done nothing to clean it up. Thousands of tourists descend on Jetty Park, an RV camping area, on holiday weekends, such as the present July 4 weekend. They didn’t come to wade through knee-deep, ...