What happened to our pretty beach?

We have been hit with a seaweed invasion of gigantic proportions!

It's called sargassum and comes from the Sargasso Sea in the North Atlantic.  We usually get some of this stuff during the year, but this year starting mostly in mid January, it has been more than we bargained for. 

From Wikipedia:
The Sargasso Sea is a region in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by ocean currents. It is bounded on the west by the Gulf Stream; on the north, by the North Atlantic Current; on the east, by the Canary Current; and on the south, by the North Atlantic Equatorial Current. This system of currents forms the North Atlantic Subtropical Gyre. All the currents deposit the marine plants and garbage they carry into this sea.
Owing to surface currents, the Sargasso accumulates a high concentration of non-biodegradable plastic waste.^[7] The huge North Atlantic Garbage Patch is similar to another ocean phenomenon, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

We have filled this trailer hundreds of times.  To give you an idea of the volume, we have loaded it 138 times just in the past two weeks.  If we leave it, the smell of rotting plant material is most unpleasant.

This critter and her friends love this stuff.  It's full of baby crabs and shrimp and other tasty morsels.

If you'd like to learn more about this phenomenon, click below.  And if you'd like to come and help us clean it up, we'd love to have you.  It's really, really fun!  Really...fun.

http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/caribbean-hit-hard-by-sargassum-seaweed-invasion