Social media grumbling aside, the tangled ruddy mats lining some Southwest Florida beaches don’t signal a crisis. In fact, they’re a good thing.
So just what is the stuff, recently seen on Sanibel, Fort Myers Beach and North Naples? Despite its color it’s not red tide. It’s algae, but it’s not blue-green algae AKA cyanobacteria, which can be a serious health risk.
It’s red drift algae, also called macroalgae, which can show up when they wash up on shore, bothering some beachgoers who don’t like how they look and smell as they age. Red drift algae can be any number of species in the phylum Rhodophyta, a large group of aquatic life-forms that aren’t plants, despite one of their common names: seaweed. Should you dive down their delightful online rabbit hole, you’ll learn they live in salt and freshwater, can be used in bone grafts and are widely eaten – the popular sushi component nori is one, as is agar, used to grow lab cultures and carrageenan, a common food texturizer.)…