The world’s largest seaweed mass is entering the Gulf of Mexico and expected to float toward beaches along Florida and the Gulf as tourist season starts.

Tracts of sodden seaweed emitting a foul smell have already begun washing up like a bad omen on southern Florida beaches. In Mexico’s Riviera Maya, hundreds of tons of the algae has piled up along the beaches as the mass moves westward between the Yucatan and Cuba. The annual Atlantic sargassum belt grew to previously unseen proportions this year, spanning 5,500 miles, twice the width of the United States, and weighing nearly 13 tons.

The island-like expanse is carried about the Atlantic by small buoyant bladders, called pneumatocysts, which resemble berries and are filled with oxygen. When they’re not menacing beaches, the huge rafts of rootless sargassum serve a vital ecological purpose, providing food, refuge and breeding grounds to birds, shrimp, fish and crab in the North Atlantic.

The sargassum can also impede boaters, slowing down their vessels and causing damage as it gets sucked into the intake and becomes entangles on propellers.Studies tracking sargassum have shown blooms starting off the northern coast of Brazil flourish as it’s fed nutrient-rich runoff from the Amazon and the Congo rivers due to deforestation and fertilizer use.

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