A “blob” of seaweed double the width of the U.S. that’s inching across the Caribbean and delivering loads of algae to Florida beaches is also carrying some unwelcome tourists: disease-causing bacteria. And the plastic debris we pour into the oceans may be making the situation worse.
That’s an important new step, says marine biologist Valerie Michotey of Aix-Marseille University in France, who was not involved in the new research. “Previous studies have just demonstrated occurrence of the Vibrio, but they have not analyzed if they were pathogenic or not,” she says. “I think it’s one of the first studies of its kind that’s been able to sort of put together genomes from that kind of environmental sample,” says Craig Baker-Austin, a microbiologist at the U.K.’s Center for Environment Fisheries and Aquaculture Science, who was not involved in the study.