Fast-Growing Seaweed Moves In on the French Riviera
Tropical algae is choking part of the Mediterranean and threatens to cause an ecological disaster, French scientists said Tuesday.
“It’s spreading like cancer,” said Alexandre Meinesz, director of Nice University’s marine environment laboratory.
The bright green weed with the scientific name of Caulerpa taxifolia is gathering in luxuriant banks stretching over nearly 75 acres off the exclusive beach resorts of the French Riviera.
Although tourism has so far been unaffected, the weed eradicates other marine life wherever it grows.
“The Mediterranean is on the brink of an ecological disaster if the seaweed continues to proliferate at its present rate,” Prof. Charles Francois Boudouresque of Marseilles University told reporters.
Scientists believe that the weed, which appeared in 1984, came from tropical fish aquariums in an oceanographic museum in the principality of Monaco that were emptied into the sea.
Most of it is concentrated around Monaco, but some has been sighted off Toulon.
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