{"id":125519,"date":"2026-01-20T22:46:57","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T22:46:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/125519\/"},"modified":"2026-01-20T22:46:57","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T22:46:57","slug":"scientists-harness-ai-to-discover-a-rise-in-floating-algae-across-the-global-ocean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/125519\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists harness AI to discover a rise in floating algae across the global ocean"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dyllan Furness<\/a>, College of Marine Science<\/p>\n

For the first time and with help from artificial intelligence, researchers have conducted
\n a comprehensive study of global floating algae and found that blooms are expanding
\n across the ocean. These trends are likely the result of changes to ocean temperature,
\n currents, and nutrients, according to the authors, and could have a significant impact
\n on marine life, tourism, and coastal economies.<\/p>\n

Led by researchers at the University of South Florida<\/a> (USF) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration<\/a> (NOAA), the study demonstrates the power of artificial intelligence as a tool for
\n processing large amounts of ocean data.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile regional studies have been published, our paper gives the first global picture
\n of floating algae, including macroalgal mats and microalgal scum,\u201d said Chuanmin Hu<\/a>, professor of oceanography at the USF College of Marine Science and senior author
\n of the paper published this week in Nature Communications<\/a>. \u201cOur results show that the global ocean now favors the growth of floating macroalgae.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more: USF experts lead on sargassum research, monitoring, and prediction<\/a><\/p>\n

Hu refers to macroalgae, such as seaweed, as a double-edged sword. In open water,
\n they can provide critical habitat for marine life and have a positive impact on fisheries,
\n serving as a nursery for many species. But once the algae reach coastal waters, the
\n decaying biomass can cause considerable harm to tourism, economies, and the health
\n of people and marine life.<\/p>\n

Between 2003 and 2022, both microalgal scum and macroalgal mats expanded around the
\n globe. Microalgae on the ocean surface saw a modest but significant increase of one
\n percent per year. However, blooms of macroalgae increased by 13.4 percent per year
\n in the tropical Atlantic and western Pacific, the authors found, with the most dramatic
\n increase in biomass occurring after 2008. The cumulative size of these macroalgal
\n blooms reached 43.8 million square kilometers (16.9 million square miles), breaking
\n with historic trends.<\/p>\n

The tipping points for macroalgae blooms occurred around 2010. The first major bloom
\n of the green seaweed known as Ulva happened in the Yellow Sea in 2008. A significant bloom of the brown seaweed Sargassum took place in the tropical Atlantic in 2011. Another Sargassum bloom occurred in the East China Sea in 2012.<\/p>\n

\u201cBefore 2008, there were no major blooms of macroalgae reported except for sargassum
\n in the Sargasso Sea,\u201d Hu said. \u201cOn a global scale, we appear to be witnessing a regime
\n shift from a macroalgae-poor ocean to an macroalgae-rich ocean.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more: Study reveals dramatic decline in some historic sargassum populations<\/a><\/p>\n

To conduct the study, Hu and his colleagues used artificial intelligence to scan 1.2
\n million satellite images of the ocean, focusing on 13 zones and five types of algae.
\n They trained a deep-learning model to spot features that signal the presence of algae
\n floating on the ocean surface. In most cases, these features appear across many image
\n pixels, but they typically comprise less than one percent of each pixel.<\/p>\n

Lin Qi, an oceanographer at the NOAA Center for Satellite Applications and Research<\/a> and first author of the study, updated a computer model previously developed by the
\n same research team to analyze 20 years of images from the global ocean. It took several
\n months and millions of image features to train Qi\u2019s model.<\/p>\n

The authors credit USF\u2019s Research Computing department for its critical role in the
\n study. The facility provided access to high-performance infrastructure that processed
\n multiple groups of images simultaneously. Even still, it took several months to process
\n and analyze the 1.2 million satellite images.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis work is impossible without the high-performance computing facility or the long-term
\n collaborations between NOAA and USF,\u201d Qi said.<\/p>\n

The study attributed the bloom expansions to both human activities, such as nutrient
\n runoff into the ocean, and climate variability, such as ocean warming, while acknowledging
\n that the reasons may differ among regions. Looking forward, Qi said, \u201cwe are going
\n to explore more satellite data and look for better understanding of the expansions.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dyllan Furness, College of Marine Science For the first time and with help from artificial intelligence, researchers have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":125520,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":{"0":"post-125519","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-st-petersburg","8":"tag-st-pete","9":"tag-st-pete-headlines","10":"tag-st-pete-news","11":"tag-st-petersburg","12":"tag-st-petersburg-headlines","13":"tag-st-petersburg-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125519\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}