Sam Wrighty age 11, of Tampa tea., for  his  question:

Do ships still get trapped in the seaweed of the Sargasso Sea?

Everyone loves to read a chilling story now and then. And some of the most spine tingling tales are told of the sea. Many a hair¬ raiser centers in the mysterious and fascinating Sargasso Sea. Some of these tales are true reports of old sailing ships becalmed on the warm, windless waters. Others are sailors yarns, invented to thrill landlubbers. The tales of ships, any ships, trapped in bogs and masses of the Sargasso seaweeds are not true    though still fun to read.

The Sargasso is a sea within a sea    a vast area, of still water surrounded by the surging currents of the Atlantic. It is large enough to just about cover the whole United States    to swamp it under two or three miles of salt water. And it is the sargassum seaweeds, not helpless vessels, which become trapped forever in its calm, warm waters.

This seaweed, a fairly large brown alga, is a native of the rocky coastal areas of Florida and the West Indies. There it clings to water drenched stones and rocks, or on the bottom of the shallow tidal seas.

The native home of the sargassum seaweed is in the path of fierce hurricanes sweeping up from tropical seas of the south. Time after time storm churned waters tear along these coasts. Masses of the clinging sargassum are ripped loose in the teeth of the lashing gales. Towed into deeper water, it drifts, helpless, on the ocean currents.

Some of the drifting seaweed is captured by the north flowing Gulf Stream. In six months or so the warm, gentle current may carry it as far as the rim of the Sargasso Sea. There, the helpless seaweed may be drifted to a peaceful life, lasting many centuries. Or it may be whirled in an eddy northward, possibly to meet at last a northern ocean current and perish in its chilly waters.