Darryl Montileone age 13, of Philadelphia.PA, for the question:

How did the Sargasso Sea form?

The Sargasso Sea is a daughter of the Gulf Stream. Its fond mother is a wide ocean current sweeping around the North Atlantic. The Sargasso Sea is enfolded in a vast circle of warm, eddying waters. It is a sea within an ocean, bounded by great swirling ocean rivers. It is protected from cold winds, cold currents and melting ice. The fabulous Sargasso is a warm region of calm waters and clear skies in the midst of the stormy Atlantic.

The Gulf Stream itself is a daughter of the sun and the wind. The northeast trade winds blow eternally towards the equator. Waves pile up ahead of them and drive across the ocean from the east. This forms the equatorial currents, driven before the trade winds across the oceans of the world.

The Gulf Stream springs from the North Equatorial current of the Atlantic. Off the shores of Central America, the mighty ocean river bends to the north. It swirls up past Cape Hatteras, north to the Grand Banks off Newfoundland. Here it turns east and crosses the Atlantic to Europe. The current divides around the shores of northern Europe and some of it swings southward. As the Canary Current it brushes the Canary Islands and swoops down to rejoin the North Equatorial current.

The vast, circling eddy is a barrier of warm water enclosing the calm Sargasso Sea. This strange sea within the ocean covers an area about equal to the United States. Bermuda lies within its sunny climate. From north to south it stretches roughly from Latitude 15 degrees North to Latitude 40 degrees North of the equator.

The pampered sea gets its name from the sargassum sea weed,  a brown algae, which floats in its waters. There are tales of old ghost ships bogged down in masses of this sea weed, of old sailing vessels becalmed forever in the windless, weedy meadows of the Sargasso Sea. These tales are fiction. The Sargasso is weedy, but not weedy enough to stop a ship.

In fact, vast areas of the calm waters are entirely free from the sargassum sea weed. It is estimated that in the whole Sargasso Sea there are but ten million tons of the brown algae. This floating weed is a native of the rocky tidal waters of the West Indies and Florida. Bit by bit through the ages it was toted by the Gulf Stream to its present home in the mid Atlantic.

Each year, hurricanes tear a few sargassum sea weeds from the shores of Florida and the West Indies. Many of these displaced plants perish as the Gulf Stream sweeps them northward. In six months or so, a few lucky plants reach the fringes of the Sargasso Sea.

Here they adjust to a new life, floating on a calm ocean three miles deep. No howling hurricane’s no tricky tide, no chilly current can touch them. Some of these lucky plants are said to live for centuries.

Fishes and other sea creatures are also taken to the Sargasso Sea by the same route. For them life is not so gentle. They must eat meat, which means they must eat each other. Through the ages, many emigrants have adopted themselves to life on and among the floating rafts of sea weed. A certain flying fish now living in the Sargasso Sea actually builds a nest for its eggs of the sargassum sea weed, a floating nest on the surface of the calm sunny water.