Here's Why Beachgoers In Florida This Summer Could Be In For A Horrible Shock

An expanse of foul-smelling seaweed so vast it can only be properly viewed from space is set to wash up on America's southeast coast – and there's very little anyone can do about it. The blob is 5,000 miles (8,050km) wide, roughly twice the width of the continental United States, and made up of sargassum, a genus of spongy brown seaweed that often smells like rotting eggs. The seaweed regularly forms blooms in the Atlantic but they're normally not nearly this large, and the current bloom is almost certainly record-setting.