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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Sara Sneath in Miami with photographs by Alfonso Duran

‘A new normal’: Miami faces worsening seaweed problem as piles of algae wash up on beaches

contractors in vehicles clean up sargassum along the water after it washed ashore on a Miami beach
County-hired contractors collect sargassum, a type of algae, after it washed ashore in Miami Beach, Florida, on 11 August 2026. Photograph: Alfonso Duran/The Guardian

Dealing with seaweed is the bulk of Chris Bumpus’s job during the summer. As chief of conservation for Miami-Dade county’s parks, recreation and open spaces department, Bumpus is in charge of cleaning sargassum off 17 miles (27km) of county beaches. But some days, the odds are stacked against him and his team.

More and more sargassum, a kind of floating brown algae, has been washing up on the beaches of south Florida, west Africa, the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean.

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