623178 external_news 1562780849 1563200851 With help from a pair of NASA satellites, scientists - including Joseph Montoya of the Georgia Tech School of Biological Sciences - have identified what’s being called the biggest patch of seaweed ever seen. The vast mat of brown Sargassum algae extends all the way across the Atlantic Ocean — a distance of about 5,500 miles — and the researchers say the so-called bloom may represent the “new normal” for parts of the Atlantic. “It goes all the way from West Africa, through the central Atlantic, towards the Caribbean Sea and reaching the Gulf of Mexico,” said Mengqiu Wang, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Southern Florida in Tampa and co-author of a paper describing the seaweed patch published July 5 in the journal Science. 
 

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