Fall colors on our beach

The fall colors on our beach may be courtesy of the Sargasso Sea, roughly 500 miles north of us. This brown seaweed is fairly common in beach drift and washes up on our beaches occasionally but this is the most we've seen at one time.

This is sargassum, a free-floating seaweed that covers the Sargasso Sea in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean.

The "sea" is formed by and the seaweed is held in place by ocean currents that make the Atlantic Sub-tropical Gyre. The same currents dump garbage in this area creating the North Atlantic Garbage Dump, similar to the Great Pacific Garbage Dump. There was a lot of plastic debris trapped in the sargassum washed up on our beach.

The sargassum piled up on the hightide surfline. Amber and Jazz had a great time nuzzling through all the amazing (to them I assume) smells. It was unusual, beautiful and strange (and fun) to think it may have escaped the gyre and floated to our beach.