‘A new normal’: Miami faces worsening seaweed problem as piles of algae wash up on beaches
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- Miami-Dade county removed 9,000 tons of sargassum from its beaches in July, more than ever cleared in a single month, as crews work around protected sea turtle nesting hours on roughly 700 nests this season.
- Miami-Dade county spends $3m per year on sargassum removal — the highest of any Florida county — funded entirely by tourist development taxes from hotel and short-term rental stays.
- Brian LaPointe, a research professor at Florida Atlantic University Harbor Branch who has studied sargassum since 1982, attributes the worsening blooms in part to climate change, explaining that warmer oceans drive extreme rain events that flush more nitrogen and phosphorus from rivers into the sea.
- The Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt, first observed in 2011 stretching from west Africa to the Gulf of Mexico, has roughly doubled every five years; this summer satellite imagery recorded 33.5 million tons of biomass, second only to 2025's record 38 million tons.
- President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico announced a $115m national plan to combat sargassum, deploying ships to scoop seaweed from open water — an approach US federal and state agencies currently prohibit out of concern for marine life in the floating mats.
- Miami-Dade commissioners voted in July to petition the state for more flexibility to use beach raking equipment in additional areas, while LaPointe warned that excess sargassum coming ashore is damaging coral reefs and seagrass beds and releasing hydrogen sulfide that poses human health risks.
- LaPointe framed the situation as a structural shift rather than a seasonal spike, saying: "People are realizing this isn't going away. It's getting worse. It's the new normal."
Why it matters: Miami-Dade's $3m annual cleanup — funded entirely by tourist taxes — is straining a budget designed for a problem that has doubled every five years since 2011, and scientists now say climate-driven nutrient runoff means worse blooms, not better, threatening the county's tourism-dependent funding model.
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