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Michael Hood: It smells like rotten eggs and putrefying fish.

Michael Hood logoMichael Hood
 It floats alive into shore in rippling brown waves, little grape-like clusters and frilly ‘leaves,’ fresh and almost becoming with the scent of the sea.

But then it piles itself up a long vulnerable shorelines, sometimes up to 10 feet high, then rots and and reeks.

It smells like rotten eggs and putrefying fish.

It’s Sargassum, a brown, free-floating macro algae in abundance. It’s global in the oceans, Haiti Sargasso Hoodespecially in the N.Atlantic’s Sagasso Sea we all read about in social studies back in the last century. It’s great habitat for a bunch of animals, not the least of which are sea turtles.

Seems there’s a climate change going on–that, plus the 2010 Gulf oil spill (the gift that keeps on giving) has caused uncontrollable and never before seen blooming in this volume, according to researchers.

First smelled it when I arrived,
in Ile a Vache,
especially along the shore in the village here where the boats pull up. Then I saw it on other beaches, and read that it’s terrorizing waterfront in Florida, Texas, Dominican Republic, Barbados, and, of course, Haiti.

From my hilltop I can see it come in great brown waves.

Mexico is reportedly spending 9.1 billion to bulldoze it at such tourist beaches as Cancun, and Cozumel.


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