It's the Gulf of America, and since Trump wanted to claim it it's now also his mess to clean up. In the meantime, Mexico should send him the bill for their cleanup of his gulf.
I hate this "War on X" rhetoric. They're not going to bomb the ocean or send troops to shoot it, so why make it sound like it? Just say what they're actually going to do about it.
"War on X" was originally a way of mocking Richard Nixon's "War on drugs". Everyone thought it was a stupid term at the time, for the reasons you list. So we started talking about the "war on cheap beer", the "war on disco music", etc (I was in college at the time). I'm not sure when people started using the term seriously.
The US wouldn't take action against the seaweed, unless it was in a fishing boat. Then it'd be ruthlessly assaulted with all seaweed and fishermen slaughtered, while claiming the seaweed was actually drugs.
Can this particular weed be eaten as-is, by human or animal, or is it known to e.g. be toxic or full of waste? Because it seems to me rather beneficial that the ocean washes it up on the shoreline ready for pick-up.
Yup, every time this issue comes up the first question is can it be used for anything? Turns out, the answer so far has been a resounding “no”.
It’s a super interesting problem from a purely analytical perspective as you run into roadblocks any time you think of a potential use case
Other people are dismissing this idea right off the cuff because of the arsenic concentration but that's a good thing. Now we use it as a feed stock for arsenic loving single celled creature. Then we concentrate it further. And again and again until you have arsenic pure enough for use. Then you can add that arsenic back into the pesticide and herbicide production processes that helped it get into the seawater instead of mining it on land.
We have these LLM tools, and the questions is "We have X amounts of sargasso algae, and it bioaccumulates arsenic. What bioremedative pathways to accumulate and extract arsenic, in order to heal the oceans, make safer food, and get pure arsenic for the silicon GaAs Industry?"
I've a friend who has access to base 3d printers, and can print up to 12k RNA base pairs. We're now at the point of growing our own remediation.
The LLMs are sold as a panacea. Time to start having them carry their salt, or their gallium arsenide and silicon.
pistachio trees grow on polluted land though, without passing the arsenic to the nuts in lethal amounts. google states they can grow up to 1000mg arsenic/per kg soil.
If you were to compost the sargassum, then grow pistachios on it until the arsenic level gets too high to kill the plant, you would at least be a step closer and it would pay for itself via the produce.
It is incorrect. They are not plants. I am curious why you think it is correct to call protists plants? It is not just taxonomy, but ecology, life history, tissue structures, and so much more. Some plants do photosynthesis. Some algae do photosynthesis. Not all things that do photosynthesis are plants. Not all things that do not do photosynthesis are not plants.
Presumably because "plant" was a word used to describe all sessile, photosynthesizing organisms visible with the naked eye long before we developed sophisticated enough tools to scientifically separate sea-weed from other plants.
Also, I'm not an expert, and I know Wikipedia isn't the most authoritative source, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant#Alternative_concepts seems to suggest that green algae are, at least at times, scientifically considered the parent group of land plants. So there's that, too.
Well, I am an expert. And ya, the “parent group”, sure, but we all have common ancestors though. So by that line of reasoning, I guess you are a plant?
Anyway ya plants evolved from protists. What other groups of organisms do we lump together based on an 19th century understanding of the world? I am amazed by people’s ability to warp the world to their priors rather be bothered to update them.
> What other groups of organisms do we lump together based on an 19th century understanding of the world?
Ooo, I know this one! Fish! Also, trees.
People love to annoy people with the fun fact that palms aren't true trees, but are actually grasses (hell, grass probably is one too), as if tree doesn't just mean "Fairly rigid plant that will usually grow taller than humans." It's useful to have words to describe categories of organisms based on how they appear to us and their relationship to us (say, "gut flora"), even if they don't describe coherent clades.
Sometimes it's important to know that a screwdriver was developed separately from a hammer and really has a very different purpose and theory behind it, and sometimes it's important to know that they both go in the toolbox because they're both things you hold and use on other things to attach things together.
My hot take is that just because a term develops a more specific, scientific definition doesn't mean that the existing colloquial definition is wrong, it's just a different use of the word. It's ok for you to disagree with that, but it's strange that you're so very dismissive of the idea.
Your friends’ botany joke is lame. Tree was never taxonomical, only a growth form or “habit” in older parlance. Plenty of individual species grow as trees or shrubs and many genera have representatives from forb through tree. There is no true tree.
The thing is if all you know is that the screwdriver and hammer go in the toolbox, you lack a functional knowledge of those tools and therefore the skill to use them. I for one am confident that you are capable of understanding that while plants and algae are both living organisms, they are functionally, ecologically, evolutionarily, and taxonomically different. The layperson so married to their colloquialisms need not worry about too much detail, yet may benefit from the knowledge that algae are not for bashing nails and plants are not for driving screws. Alas you may wish to know which of the sea you may eat raw or which might seasonally give you a nut flour. Or you may more easily grasp the functional and ecological role of microalgae, armed with the background understanding of their distinction from trees and grasses, should you encounter those creatures. And I hope you do, since you are relying on them to live.
In any case, in my experience, the greater people’s understanding of natural history and their ability to name the organisms in their environment, the more likely they are to see, appreciate, and value the rich mosaic if life around them. The benefits of that are grand for the individual even if they don’t bother connecting the dots on the science.
Colloquialisms are great. But suggesting we all permanently adopt and maintain a state of ignorance because a certain subset of humans had a term, I dunno.
"Tetrapods are descended from fish, so in a break from the long tradition of grouping all fish into a single class (Pisces), modern phylogenetics views fish as a paraphyletic group that includes all vertebrates except tetrapods. To treat fish as a monophyletic group, one would have to classify tetrapods as a clade/subgroup of specialized fish, which would make "fish" and "vertebrates" synonyms."
Hm. I don't think there is anything wrong with having terms defining paraphyletic groups. I don't think we need to treat fish or plants for that matter as a monophyletic group necessarily in order to avoid misinformation. The group that includes algae and plants is monophyletic after all, but I don't know what that has to do with the original point.
"Are algae plants?"
"Yes."
Is incorrect. That it once stood as the best available information is interesting but not relevant to the veracity.
That's true in a taxonomical context, but it's not incorrect to call algae "plants" by other definitions. Another example: many pedants overlook that a tomato is both a fruit and a vegetable.
I think the environment wants to balance itself back to "normal" levels (back under 300 ppm CO2) - like this algae wants to grow super fast, absorb tons of carbon and chemicals, and turn itself into coal or whatever but there is a nasty middle step of poisoning the beaches and killing all of the animals near-shore.
It is interesting that the equivalent pesticide dumping has balanced out to plant growth.
I wonder if the seeweed is naturally Monsanto Ready and we could harvest this gene for a green room implementation to subvert the grip they exert over their crop lines.
We have been having a similar issue in my hometown in Greece (photo from this June: https://i2.prth.gr/files/2026-06-08/thermaikos-plankton-mkt....). Ours is plankton and I think the cause might be runoff from fertilizers and years of wastewater. It started getting worse around 2017.
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[ 0.19 ms ] story [ 17.5 ms ] threadIt's the Gulf of America, and since Trump wanted to claim it it's now also his mess to clean up. In the meantime, Mexico should send him the bill for their cleanup of his gulf.
A strange case of nominative determinism.
> Just say what they're actually going to do about it.
People don't have infinite attention. That's why headlines and slogans carry so well, even when they are lossy/misleading to the reality.
Find a way to lower salt & arsenic content, and it could be an excellent fertilizer.
More general details here: https://materialdistrict.com/article/from-algae-to-architect...
We have these LLM tools, and the questions is "We have X amounts of sargasso algae, and it bioaccumulates arsenic. What bioremedative pathways to accumulate and extract arsenic, in order to heal the oceans, make safer food, and get pure arsenic for the silicon GaAs Industry?"
I've a friend who has access to base 3d printers, and can print up to 12k RNA base pairs. We're now at the point of growing our own remediation.
The LLMs are sold as a panacea. Time to start having them carry their salt, or their gallium arsenide and silicon.
our chocolate shortage is dire!
https://imgur.com/a/HkYhIhx
Back when I lived in Cancún I remember 1-2 meters high mountains of sargassum in less touristic beaches like Playa Coral.
Eg: https://irp.cdn-website.com/f070c7e5/dms3rep/multi/Sargazo+C...
https://research.noaa.gov/noaa-sargassum-tool-now-provides-d...
But outside of taxonomy, it's not incorrect to call them plants.
Also, I'm not an expert, and I know Wikipedia isn't the most authoritative source, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant#Alternative_concepts seems to suggest that green algae are, at least at times, scientifically considered the parent group of land plants. So there's that, too.
Anyway ya plants evolved from protists. What other groups of organisms do we lump together based on an 19th century understanding of the world? I am amazed by people’s ability to warp the world to their priors rather be bothered to update them.
Ooo, I know this one! Fish! Also, trees.
People love to annoy people with the fun fact that palms aren't true trees, but are actually grasses (hell, grass probably is one too), as if tree doesn't just mean "Fairly rigid plant that will usually grow taller than humans." It's useful to have words to describe categories of organisms based on how they appear to us and their relationship to us (say, "gut flora"), even if they don't describe coherent clades.
Sometimes it's important to know that a screwdriver was developed separately from a hammer and really has a very different purpose and theory behind it, and sometimes it's important to know that they both go in the toolbox because they're both things you hold and use on other things to attach things together.
My hot take is that just because a term develops a more specific, scientific definition doesn't mean that the existing colloquial definition is wrong, it's just a different use of the word. It's ok for you to disagree with that, but it's strange that you're so very dismissive of the idea.
The thing is if all you know is that the screwdriver and hammer go in the toolbox, you lack a functional knowledge of those tools and therefore the skill to use them. I for one am confident that you are capable of understanding that while plants and algae are both living organisms, they are functionally, ecologically, evolutionarily, and taxonomically different. The layperson so married to their colloquialisms need not worry about too much detail, yet may benefit from the knowledge that algae are not for bashing nails and plants are not for driving screws. Alas you may wish to know which of the sea you may eat raw or which might seasonally give you a nut flour. Or you may more easily grasp the functional and ecological role of microalgae, armed with the background understanding of their distinction from trees and grasses, should you encounter those creatures. And I hope you do, since you are relying on them to live.
In any case, in my experience, the greater people’s understanding of natural history and their ability to name the organisms in their environment, the more likely they are to see, appreciate, and value the rich mosaic if life around them. The benefits of that are grand for the individual even if they don’t bother connecting the dots on the science.
Colloquialisms are great. But suggesting we all permanently adopt and maintain a state of ignorance because a certain subset of humans had a term, I dunno.
What’s the fish one?
To again quote Wikipedia,
"Tetrapods are descended from fish, so in a break from the long tradition of grouping all fish into a single class (Pisces), modern phylogenetics views fish as a paraphyletic group that includes all vertebrates except tetrapods. To treat fish as a monophyletic group, one would have to classify tetrapods as a clade/subgroup of specialized fish, which would make "fish" and "vertebrates" synonyms."
"Are algae plants?" "Yes."
Is incorrect. That it once stood as the best available information is interesting but not relevant to the veracity.
I wonder if the seeweed is naturally Monsanto Ready and we could harvest this gene for a green room implementation to subvert the grip they exert over their crop lines.