Giant seaweed blob twice the width of the US takes aim at Florida

TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — Marine scientists are tracking a 5,000-mile-wide seaweed bloom that is so large, it can be seen from space. These sargassum blooms are nothing new, but scientists say this one could be the largest in history. “It’s incredible,” Brian LaPointe, a research professor at Florida Atlantic University’s Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute told NBC News. Barnes and his colleagues at USF’s Optical Oceanography Laboratory track sargassum blooms. Typically, rafts of sargassum gather in the Sargassum Sea region in the northern Atlantic Ocean.