Did you know there’s only one sea on Planet Earth that touches no land, because it has no shoreline whatsoever?
The floating cover grows so thick that early Spanish crews feared their wooden caravels would halt and “never again feel a breath of wind,” as Christopher Columbus wrote in 1492.
Jules Verne once called the Sargasso “a perfect lake in the open Atlantic.” Today that lake collects trash from four converging currents: the North Atlantic Current, Canary Current, North Equatorial Current, and Antilles Current.
Sargasso Sea looks like an 800-mile-wide nursery. Scientists call the drifting mats “habitat islands,” and for good reason. Hatchling turtles hide here until their shells harden.
The Sargasso Sea Commission, an intergovernmental body formed in 2014, calls the region a “haven of biodiversity” and urges countries to designate shipping lanes that skirt dense mats.
Marine protected area status remains complicated; no nation owns the sea, and enforcement on the high seas is costly
