Lying in the North Atlantic Ocean, the Sargasso Sea is unlike any other sea. The currents that bound it create a gyre. Within its centre lies what Dr Sylvia Earle called “a golden floating forest,” formed from a floating brown Sargassum seaweed. It is a unique and thriving system for myriad marine animals.

Sargassum can make its way out of the gyre, drifting into the Caribbean. “Sargassum used to come in little patches,” says Shelly-Ann Cox, a Sargassum expert who manages the GEO Blue Planet Sargassum Information Hub. For fishers, like those in Barbados who target flyingfish, these small patches “were a good sign…the flyingfish would spawn on the patches,” Cox explains. However, since 2011, those small patches have become sprawling mats. These influxes are coming from a new source, “Now every year is getting worse and worse and worse,” says Cox.

Read the full story The Sargassum Information Hub: a collaborative approach to a common problem at GEO Blue Planet