Sargasso Sea

The Sargasso Sea (/sɑːrˈɡæsoʊ/) is a region of the Atlantic Ocean bounded by four currents forming an ocean gyre.[1] Unlike all other regions called seas, it has no land boundaries.[2][3][4] It is distinguished from other parts of the Atlantic Ocean by its characteristic brown Sargassum seaweed and often calm blue water. It may be pointed out that a similar Sargasso sea is not found in the South Atlantic Ocean[1]

For other uses, see Sargasso Sea (disambiguation).
Not to be confused with Saragossa.

3,500,000 km²
The Sargasso Sea in the North Atlantic is bounded by the Gulf Stream on the west, the North Atlantic Current on the north, the Canary Current on the east, and the North Equatorial Current on the south.

The sea is bounded on the west by the Gulf Stream, on the north by the North Atlantic Current, on the east by the Canary Current, and on the south by the North Atlantic Equatorial Current, the four together forming a clockwise-circulating system of ocean currents termed the North Atlantic Gyre. It lies between 70° and 40° W, and 20° to 35° N, and is approximately 1,100 km wide by 3,200 km long (700 by 2,000 miles).[5][6] Bermuda is near the western fringes of the sea.[7]

All of the currents deposit the marine plants and refuse which they are carrying into this sea, yet the ocean water in the Sargasso Sea is distinctive for its deep blue color and exceptional clarity, with underwater visibility of up to 61 m (200 ft).[8] It is also a body of water that has captured the public imagination, and so is seen in a wide variety of literary and artistic works and in popular culture.[9]

History

The naming of the Sargasso Sea for its Sargassum seaweed dates from the early 15th-century Portuguese explorations of the Azores Islands and of the large "volta do mar" (the North Atlantic gyre), around and west of the archipelago, where the seaweed was often present.[10] However, the sea may have been known to earlier mariners, as a poem by the late 4th-century author Rufus Festus Avienus describes a portion of the Atlantic as being covered with seaweed, citing a now-lost account by the 5th-century BC Carthaginian Himilco the Navigator.[11]

According to the Muslim cartographer Muhammad al-Idrisi, the Mugharrarūn (Arabic: المغررون‎, "the adventurers") sent by the Almoravid sultan Ali ibn Yusuf (1084–1143), led by his admiral Ahmad ibn Umar, reached a part of the ocean covered by seaweed,[12] identified by some as the Sargasso Sea.[13]

In 1846, Edward Forbes hypothesized a post-Miocene land mass extending westward from Europe into the Atlantic:

If this land existed it did not extend to America (for the fossils of the Miocene of America are representative & not identical): where then was the edge or coastline of it, Atlantic-wards? Look at the form & constancy of the great fucus-bank & consider that it is a Sargassum bank.

— Edward Forbes, from the Darwin Correspondence Project[14]

Ecology
Lines of sargassum in the Sargasso Sea

The Sargasso Sea is home to seaweed of the genus Sargassum, which floats en masse on the surface. The sargassum is not a threat to shipping, and historic incidents of sailing ships being trapped there are due to the often calm winds of the horse latitudes.[15]

The Sargasso Sea plays a role in the migration of catadromous eel species such as the European eel, the American eel, and the American conger eel. The larvae of these species hatch within the sea, and as they grow they travel to Europe or the East Coast of North America. Later in life, the matured eel migrates back to the Sargasso Sea to spawn and lay eggs. It is also believed that after hatching, young loggerhead sea turtles use currents such as the Gulf Stream to travel to the Sargasso Sea, where they use the sargassum as cover from predators until they are mature.[16][17] The sargassum fish is a species of frogfish specially adapted to blend in among the sargassum seaweed.[18]

In the early 2000s, the Sargasso Sea was sampled as part of the Global Ocean Sampling survey, to evaluate its diversity of microbial life through metagenomics. Contrary to previous theories, results indicated the area has a wide variety of prokaryotic life.[19]

Pollution

Owing to surface currents, the Sargasso accumulates a high concentration of non-biodegradable plastic waste.[20][21] The area contains the huge North Atlantic garbage patch.[22]

Several nations and nongovernmental organizations have united to protect the Sargasso Sea.[23] These organizations include the Sargasso Sea Commission[24] established 11 March 2014 by the governments of the Azores (Portugal), Bermuda (United Kingdom), Monaco, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Bacteria that consume plastic have been found in the plastic-polluted waters of the Sargasso Sea; however, it is unknown whether these bacteria ultimately clean up poisons or simply spread them elsewhere in the marine microbial ecosystem. Plastic debris can absorb toxic chemicals from ocean pollution, potentially poisoning anything that eats it.[25]

The Sargasso Sea is often portrayed in literature and the media as an area of mystery.[9]

Ezra Pound's "Portrait d'une Femme" opens with the line: "Your mind and you are our Sargasso Sea", suggesting that the woman addressed in the poem is a repository of trivia and disconnected facts.

The Sargasso Sea features in classic fantasy stories by William Hope Hodgson, such as his novel The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" (1907), Victor Appleton's Don Sturdy novel Don Sturdy in the Port of Lost Ships: Or, Adrift in the Sargasso Sea, and several related short stories.[26] Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas describes the Sargasso Sea and gives an account of its formation.[27]

The Sargasso Sea is frequently (but erroneously) depicted in fiction as a dangerous area where ships are mired in weed for centuries, unable to escape. The Doc Savage novel The Sargasso Ogre, published in 1933, takes place in the Sargasso where descendants of Elizabethan pirates still live. A similar story appears in Green Lantern (vol. 1) No. 3 (Spring 1942), "The Living Graveyard of the Sea," which refers to it as a supposedly mythical place. Here the descendants of many different kinds of ships live in utopian harmony, until they are attacked by Nazis who wish to use it to their advantage. The premiere episode of Jonny Quest, "Mystery of the Lizard Men", involves a spy ring operating in the Sargasso, underneath the (nonexistent) derelict ships. Hammer Film Productions' 1968 film The Lost Continent (based on a 1938 Dennis Wheatley novel, Uncharted Seas), depicts travelers lost in a Sargasso Sea infested with carnivorous seaweed, giant crustaceans, and descendants of Spanish conquistadores ruling over other trapped people, descendants of those mired in the weed centuries before. These depictions are parodied in The Venture Bros. season 1 episode "Ghosts of the Sargasso", set in the overlapping areas of the Sargasso Sea and the Bermuda Triangle, which depicts supposed pirates whose ship was stuck in the sargassum for a decade and the ghost of the pilot of an experimental aircraft which crashed into the sea in 1969.[28] The Sargasso Sea is a key location in "Indiana Jones and the Sargasso Pirates", a 1995 comic book limited series from Dark Horse. The adventurer, having been lost at sea, washes up at a 'city' of derelict ships from throughout maritime history, trapped and bouyed by dense seaweed. The ships are populated by pirates and the waters swarming with eels.[29]

Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) by Jean Rhys is a rewriting of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre from Bertha Mason's point of view.[30]

The Sargasso Sea is referenced in the Dead Can Dance song "All in Good Time" from their 2012 album Anastasis.[31]

The Sargasso Sea is referenced in the refrain of Andrew Bird's April 2016 song "Left-Handed Kisses" (featuring singer Fiona Apple).[32][33]

Writer Charles Fort hypothesized about the existence of what he called the "Super-Sargasso Sea", a place where all lost things go. The pop-culture wiki TV Tropes recognizes a trope that takes this same name.

One-man band Lemon Demon also refers to the Super-Sargasso Sea in the song "Touch-Tone Telephone", released on his 2016 album Spirit Phone.[34]

The Sargasso Sea is referenced in the 2019 episode "Silky Love"[35] of the Radiolab podcast as the location where eels migrate and procreate.

The Sargasso Sea is used as an analogy in the novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert M. Pirsig, by the main character when describing how rhetoric as a discipline can be "a huge Sargasso of stagnated logic".

References
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  30. Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea (1966)
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