COCOA, Fla. — Seaweed season has arrived along the Brevard County coast.
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The piles of sargassum seaweed stretch for miles, with more expected to arrive soon.
In Cocoa Beach, the city said what people see is relatively normal for this time of year. There are just larger amounts of this seaweed in the Atlantic Ocean than in years past.
Read: Massive seaweed invasion arrives at Florida beaches, could be worst bloom ever recorded
It can get pretty smelly as it decays, and much is expected to end up on the shoreline.
On Saturday afternoon, beach visitors saw a good amount of sargassum.
“There’s a lot here, depending on the tide,” resident John Adams said.
Read: What is sargassum, the 5,000-mile-long mat of seaweed heading toward Florida?
A City of Cocoa Beach environmental specialist inspected the seaweed and said it looks like the sargassum has started to arrive.
The seaweed in the Atlantic Ocean threatens to dump more seaweed along the Florida coastline.
Dr. Brian Lapointe, a Florida Atlantic University Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute researcher, has studied this type of seaweed for years.
Read: ‘Huge’ bloom of seaweed looms in the Atlantic, likely headed to Florida beaches
“Some have referred to it as ‘the blob’ that’s moving into the Caribbean and toward us,” he said.
This sargassum, also known as wrack, can be beneficial for providing food and habitat for marine life.
But this year, some people are concerned about excessive amounts on the beach.
“It’s Mother Nature,” Adams said. “It’s coming in different amounts every year. It’s a lot from what they’re talking about, and it hasn’t hit us yet, and if it hits us worse than this, wow.”
Channel 9 has checked with county officials and Port Canaveral officials, and they said they had not received any complaints about large amounts of seaweed so far.
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