US-China deal to slash tariffs also eases burden on cheap packages
WASHINGTON — Online shoppers in the U.S. will see a price break on their purchases valued at less than $800 and shipped from China after the Trump administration reached a truce with Beijing over sky-high tariffs.
An executive order Monday from President Donald Trump said the tariffs on low-value parcels originating from China and coming through the U.S. Postal Service will be lowered to 54%, down from 120%.
It also says a per-package flat rate — as an alternative to the value-based tariff — will be kept at $100, rather than being raised to $200 on June 1 as previously decreed. Packages shipped by commercial carriers are subject to the general tariff, which also has been cut.
The new rules go into effect Wednesday.
They are part of a broader agreement by the Trump administration to drastically lower import taxes on all Chinese goods from 145% to 30% following weekend talks in Switzerland with Chinese officials. China issued a public notice on Tuesday lowering its own tariffs on U.S. goods to 10%, down from 125%.
However, the reductions are temporary, allowing the two sides to negotiate a longer-term deal in the next 90 days.
Izzy Rosenzweig, founder and CEO of the logistic company Portless, said U.S. brands are “very excited” about the broader tariff cut. The import tax is still high, but not as prohibitive as when it was 145%, which amounted to a trade embargo.
On the low-value shipments, online purchases had been coming into the U.S. duty-free for several years under the de minimis rule, which exempted them from the import tax.
Popular shopping sites such as Shein and Temu that offer ultra-low prices took advantage of the duty-free rule by shipping directly from China to U.S. buyers, bypassing more cumbersome customs paperwork.
President Donald Trump terminated the exemption on such parcels originating from China and Hong Kong on May 2, following criticism that it not only resulted in lost tariff revenue but also allowed illicit drugs and unsafe products to flow into the U.S. without adequate scrutiny.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection said as many as 4 million low-value parcels were coming into the U.S. every day — many of which originated from China.
Shortly before the exemption ended on May 2, prices on many items sold by Shein rose. Temu apparently halted shipments from China and tapped its existing inventory in the U.S.
John Lash, group vice president of product strategy at the supply chain platform e2open, said he expected the volume of low-value packages would now rise but not back to previous levels. The $100 flat rate, he said, means that higher-value packages could get less of a hit, because the effective duty rate could be as low as 13%.
Neither Shein nor Temu immediately responded to requests for comment Tuesday about the lower tariffs.
Israeli strikes in Gaza kill scores, dimming hope for a ceasefire despite Trump’s mounting pressure
Israeli airstrikes pounded northern and southern Gaza on Wednesday, killing at least 60 people, including almost two dozen children, according to local hospitals and health officials in the Hamas-controlled Palestinian territory. The strikes came a day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there was “no way” he would halt Israel’s offensive in the Palestinian enclave before Hamas is defeated.
At least 50 people, including 22 children, were killed in the strikes around Jabaliya in northern Gaza, according to local hospitals and Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry. At least 10 other people were killed in the city of Khan Younis, the European Hospital reported. A CBS News cameraman saw multiple bodies on a street in the southern Gazan city.
The Israel Defense Forces said it had targeted a Hamas stronghold underneath a hospital.
Hatem Khaled/REUTERS 
That attack came just a day after the Trump administration, bypassing Israel, struck a deal with Hamas – long designated a terrorist group by Israel and the U.S. – to secure the release of the last living American hostage who had been held in Gaza, Edan Alexander. It was a gesture that some thought could lay the groundwork for a ceasefire, but Netanyahu has made it clear he will not halt Israel’s war in Gaza, even if Hamas releases its hostages, until his stated objectives are met, dimming hopes for a truce.
A statement issued by the Israeli leader’s office on Wednesday stressed that Netanyahu remained “determined to complete all of Israel’s war goals: the release of all our hostages, the military and governmental defeat of Hamas, and a promise that Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel.”
Netanyahu under mounting pressure from all sides
As CBS News correspondent Debora Patta reported, for the families of the 58 people still held captive in Gaza — as many as 23 of whom Israeli officials believe could still be alive, the joy of Alexander’s release quickly turned to rage as the bombing resumed and intensified following the handover.
At the latest of the regular demonstrations in Israel’s capital, many accused Netanyahu on Tuesday of deliberately prolonging the war sparked by Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack.
As President Trump visits the region this week, former Israeli diplomat Alon Pinkas told CBS News that Netanyahu has been left watching from the sidelines.
“Staggeringly, he [Trump] is not coming here,” Pinkas said, referring to the U.S. leader’s itinerary, which includes stops this week in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. “This is a very visible, very in-your-face kind of move by Trump.”
Pinkas said Netanyahu would need to have a ceasefire deal in the works to remain on Mr. Trump’s good side, and he warned that, “Israel cannot wage the war against the judgment and wishes of the United States government. That’s plain and simple.”
Asked if Netanyahu could feasibly resist the mounting pressure from Trump to end the war, Pinkas said: “Not really. He’s got no ammunition left in his political magazine.
For the moment, Mr. Trump’s pressure on Netanyahu is only diplomatic, with no public discussion of any additional measures, such as limiting supplies of U.S. weapons, as happened briefly under the Biden administration.
And for now, Netanyahu has intensified the war, and he has continued to maintain a controversial blockade on all humanitarian supplies, fuel and other essential goods entering the enclave since March.
The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people in the 2023 intrusion into southern Israel. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed almost 53,000 Palestinians, many of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health.
Israel’s offensive has obliterated vast swathes of Gaza’s urban landscape and displaced 90% of the population, often multiple times.
France’s Macron calls Netanyahu tactics in Gaza “a disgrace”
International food security experts warned earlier this week that famine could break out in the Gaza Strip if Israel doesn’t lift its blockade and stop its military campaign.
French President Emmanuel Macron strongly denounced Netanyahu’s decision to block aid from entering Gaza as “a disgrace” that has caused a major humanitarian crisis.
“I say it forcefully, what Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is doing today is unacceptable,” Macron said Tuesday evening on TF1 national television. “There’s no medicine. We can’t get the wounded out. Doctors can’t get in. What he’s doing is a disgrace. It’s a disgrace.”
Mahmoud ssa/Anadolu/Getty 
Macron, who visited injured Palestinians in El Arish hospital in Egypt last month, called for the reopening of the Gaza border to humanitarian convoys. “Then, yes, we must fight to demilitarize Hamas, free the hostages and build a political solution,” he said.
Netanyahu, in the statement issued by his office on Wednesday, lashed out at the French leader, claiming he had “once again chosen to stand by a murderous Islamist terrorist organization and echo its false propaganda, while accusing Israel of blood libels.”
“Instead of supporting the Western democratic camp that is fighting the Islamist terrorist organizations and calling for the release of the hostages, Macron is once again demanding that Israel surrender and reward terrorism,” the statement said.
Nearly half a million Palestinians are facing possible starvation, living at “catastrophic” levels of hunger, while 1 million others can barely get enough food, according to findings by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a leading international authority on the severity of hunger crises.
Israel has dismissed international warnings that potential famine looms, but it has banned all food, shelter, medicine and any other goods from entering the Palestinian territory for the past 10 weeks, even as it carries out waves of airstrikes and ground operations.
Gaza’s population of around 2.3 million people relies almost entirely on outside aid to survive, because Israel’s 19-month-old military campaign has destroyed most food production capacity inside the territory.
Trump backs Jack Ciattarelli in New Jersey’s Republican primary for governor
TRENTON, N.J. — President Donald Trump endorsed Republican Jack Ciattarelli in New Jersey’s GOP primary, saying he’s gone “ALL IN” on the “Make America Great Again” agenda.
Trump’s endorsement came Monday in a Truth Social post and gives Ciattarelli’s campaign a boost as he competes against two other Trump supporters and a state senator who has been critical of the president.
The president’s endorsement and Ciattarelli’s gratitude to Trump in a social media post of his own reflect the president’s influence in the party, even in Democratic-leaning New Jersey.
Trump’s endorsement hinted at Ciattarelli’s earlier criticism of Trump during his first run for the White House a decade ago, when he said Trump wasn’t fit for the presidency.
“Jack, who after getting to know and understand MAGA, has gone ALL IN, and is now 100% (PLUS!),” Trump said in the Truth Social post.
Ciattarelli said in a post on X that he was “truly humbled and honored” by the endorsement.
“It’s time to unite our party, win big in November, and make New Jersey affordable and safe again,” he said.
Bill Spadea, a former radio host who’s also running in the June 10 primary and has called for replicating the president’s approach in New Jersey, suggested the president was backing Ciattarelli because some polling indicated he was in the lead.
“(Trump) endorsed a poll not a plan,” he said on X. “We have the only plan and core principles to restore common sense to New Jersey government.”
Trump’s endorsement comes after he met earlier this year with Ciattarelli at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club.
Ciattarelli’s campaign has said it sought the president’s endorsement and pointed to his performance in the 2024 election in which the president flipped former blue counties red.
New Jersey has been reliably Democratic in U.S. presidential and Senate elections. But its odd-year gubernatorial contests have seesawed between Democrats and Republicans.
Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy, a two-term incumbent, cannot seek a third-straight term under state law. Democrats are also locked in competitive primary.
In addition to Ciattarelli and Spadea, former Englewood Cliffs Mayor Mario Kranjac and state Sen. Jon Bramnick are seeking their party’s nomination.
Ciattarelli, 63, is an accountant and small business owner who served in the state Assembly and county office. He ran unsuccessfully for governor in the previous two cycles. In 2021, he came within a few percentage points of defeating Murphy. In 2017, he lost in the GOP primary to then-Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno.
New York AG James sues Capital One after Trump’s CFPB drops claims
The logo for consumer lending firm Capital One Financial Corp is seen on its headquarters on January 20, 2023 in McLean, Virginia. The company has reportedly eliminated up to 1,100 technology positions this week as its digital structure matures.
Win Mcnamee | Getty Images News | Getty Images
New York Attorney General Letitia James sued Capital One on Wednesday, accusing the bank of “cheating” customers out of millions of dollars in interest payments – just months after the Trump administration’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau dropped a similar suit against the financial institution.
In a complaint filed in Manhattan federal court, James alleged that Capital One marketed its “360 Savings” account as its high-yield savings account, then left those customers in the dark by failing to inform them about its new “360 Performance Savings” product that offered substantially higher interest rates.
As interest rates rose starting in 2022, the state attorney general’s office said, Capital One froze the interest rate of its 360 Savings product at 0.3%, while increasing the rate of the 360 Performance Savings accounts to as high as 4.35%, meaning New York 360 Savings customers lost out on “millions of dollars of interest.”
The suit further alleges that Capital One instructed its employees not to tell 360 Savings customers about the new product “unless they explicitly asked.”
The complaint mimics litigation by the CFPB, which was dropped in February under Trump-era CFPB Acting Director Russell Vought. That suit alleged Capital One’s marketing led U.S. customers to miss out on more than $2 billion in interest.
The dropped CFPB case is among a slew of other enforcement lawsuits that the agency pursued under previous CFPB director, Rohit Chopra, and that have been dismissed by President Donald Trump’s administration.
“Capital One assured high returns with no catches, then pulled the rug out from under their customers and hoped nobody would notice,” James said in a statement Wednesday. “Big banks are not allowed to cheat their customers with false advertising and misleading promises.”
A Capital One spokesperson said in a statement to CNBC it strongly disagrees with the attorney general’s claims and will “rigorously defend” itself in court.
“Our flagship 360 Performance Savings product was marketed widely, including on national television, and has always been available in just minutes to all new and existing customers without any of the usual industry restrictions,” the spokesperson said.
The bank also disputed the CFPB allegations earlier this year.
The New York suit accuses Capital One of violating state and federal law and seeks “restitution and damages for all affected Capital One customers.”
Science says this is how much muscle you could gain by taking creatine
If increasing muscle mass and strength is high on your gym agenda, then one supplement that consistently stands out is creatine, thanks to being one of the most well-researched and studied supplements. The International Society of Sports Nutrition dubs it as “one of the most popular nutritional ergogenic aids for athletes”.
Creatine helps our body recycle ATP (our body’s energy currency) more quickly, helping us to push harder during training, aiding us in building more muscle mass and strength. But, how much muscle can you actually gain from taking creatine? A meta-analysis in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning has revealed the answer to this very question.
The study
(Image credit: Getty Images)
The analysis sought to look at whether taking creatine could make resistance training more effective in adults under the age of 50, specifically when it came to gaining muscle and reducing body fat. The researchers looked at 1,694 records in total and settled on the 12 strongest studies to compare data.
The results? On average, they found that taking creatine alongside resistance training increased lean body mass by an average of 1.14 kg and reduced body fat mass by around 0.73 kg.
Some people argue that when you gain weight from taking creatine, most of it isn’t actual muscle tissue, it’s just water being stored in your muscles. Well, 76% of our muscles are water, so this isn’t exactly a bad thing. Not to mention, if you’re able to lift more and your muscles look fuller, it’s a win-win.
Was the fat loss a direct result of the creatine? Probably not. It’s most likely to do with the fact that the individuals had gained more muscle, thus increasing their resting metabolic rate and due to having a higher energy expenditure during training. Either way, there’s no point overanalysing the details – the individuals still lost body fat.
Although everyone will respond differently to creatine, and the results from this analysis are averages, it gives us a more realistic idea of what to expect from taking creatine.
Also, remember, creatine doesn’t only help us in the gym either; studies suggest it may also enhance cognitive function, improve short-term memory, and even support those with depression. For helping you build strength and muscle though, it really is one of the easiest and most effective supplements on the market.
ESN Ultrapure Creatine Monohydrate
This creatine powder from ESN is super fine, helping it blend effortlessly in drinks and food. This bag contains around 142 servings of creatine, delivering a decent 3.5g per serving. It’s also unflavoured, so you can add it into pretty much anything.
Optimum Nutrition Micronised Creatine Powder
This creatine from Optimum Nutrition is excellent value for money, provifing you with 186 servings! Ideal if you’re in need of a big re-stock of your favourite supplement. It also mixes very well with water.
Warrior Creatine Monohydrate Powder
Warrior serves a hefty 5g of creatine with every scoop, for those looking to get a slightly higher supplement intake. It’s also blue raspberry flavoured (although you can get it in unflavoured too) and an absolute steal, coming in at under £10. The packaging is also pretty cool.
Warner Bros. Discovery Just Reversed That Terrible ‘HBO Max’ Branding Decision
Credit: Warner Bros. Discovery
I love movies and TV shows of all kinds, but I have to admit I have a soft spot for HBO. The channel is responsible for some of my favorite TV experiences of all time: Game of Thrones, Barry, Silicon Valley, and now The Last of Us all come to mind. I’ll watch anything on any platform that looks intriguing enough, but when HBO is attached, I’m even more likely to watch.
That’s why it made absolutely no sense at all for Warner Bros. Discovery to remove the name of one of the most respected brands in show business, truncating HBO Max to just Max. HBO hasn’t gone away: The channel is still a massive part of the streaming service, offering its past catalogue as well as producing new shows as it always has. But there are also “Max Originals,” which are not HBO shows but available on the platform formerly known as HBO Max. Not confusing at all.
It’s been two years since the name change, and it seems like the decision has been a success. Oh, sorry, did I say success? I don’t have access to Warner Bros. Discovery’s internal data, but I imagine it hasn’t been a success, seeing as the company is now bringing back HBO Max from the dead.
Somehow, HBO Max returned
It’s true: Warner Bros. Discovery is returning HBO to its platforms’ name this summer. No longer will you need to tell your friends to open Max to watch the latest episode of Hacks or The White Lotus (were there many of us still calling this anything but HBO anyway?)
The company won’t necessarily admit the name change was a bad idea, but it does offer a corporate explanation. JB Perrette, the company’s President and CEO of Streaming, said that “This evolution has also been influenced by changing consumer needs…No consumer today is saying they want more content, but most consumers are saying they want better content.”
What do you think so far?
Perrette also said they’ve been “iterating” on the idea for the past two years, which sounds to me like the company had immediate regrets after ditching the HBO brand. Perrette references Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav’s, who reportedly championed the idea that the company should “go back to including HBO in the brand, because nothing stands for distinction and quality more than HBO.” Well, duh.
At least the official HBO X account is having a fun time with the news:
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iOS 19’s new leaks show Apple has a winning trio of upgrades ready
iOS 19 will be unveiled at WWDC in just a few weeks. But as we wait, leaks about the release keep coming. The latest details revealed this week should prompt a lot of instant upgrades when iOS 19 launches this fall.
New iOS 19 design won’t be its only selling point
Anyone who has been following iOS 19 rumors closely will know that the most exciting upgrade coming is a big UI redesign.
Ever since iOS 7 completely overhauled the iPhone’s design, users have wondered when Apple might have another big redesign ready.
It sounds like this is the year.
A fresh new design will hit your iPhone this fall with iOS 19, reportedly with goals of being:
- Simpler to use
- Faster to navigate
- Easier to learn
Early mockups have revealed Apple striking a balance between fresh and familiar. There will be new glassy effects, UI elements made more reachable on large iPhones, and a general modernization of the OS.
But despite the redesign undoubtedly stealing the spotlight from iOS 19’s other upgrades, two other details revealed this week should stir a lot of excitement among users.
iOS 19 could deliver what users want: better battery life and fewer glitches
The newest iOS 19 leaks came from Mark Gurman this week, who shared about two key new details.
Per Gurman, iOS 19 will:
- Improve the iPhone’s battery life using AI
- and be “more functional and less glitchy” than past updates
Aside from the prospect of a flashy new design, can you think of two more appealing details that could spark a wave of instant upgrades?
Better battery life and fewer bugs sounds like a winning combo to sell just about anyone on iOS 19’s merits.
If installing an update makes your iPhone’s battery last longer, who’s going to turn that down?
Longtime users still often wish for Snow Leopard-style updates for Apple’s platforms—meaning, new OS versions that prioritize performance and bug fixes over new features.
Between the new design, better battery life, and potentially fewer bugs, iOS 19 could offer three extremely enticing reasons to upgrade.
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US Brands Like Coke and Jim Beam See Backlash Abroad Due to Tariffs
For some people abroad, a Jim Beam and Coke isn’t going down as easily as it once did.
Companies that make some of the biggest American brands have noted different degrees of pain as some consumers overseas avoid their products in protest of President Donald Trump’s trade war.
Globally, consumers are less likely to buy many major US brands than they were just a few months ago, survey data published late last month by Morning Consult found.
“This suggests that overseas consumers are uniquely singling out some American brands due to their country of origin,” the report says.
US companies already face plenty of problems because of tariffs, mostly in the form of snarled supply chains and higher import costs. The backlash abroad points to another issue: What happens when a brand’s connection with America starts becoming a liability instead of a selling point?
In Mexico, for instance, the share of customers who said they were “absolutely certain” to buy a Coca-Cola product in the near future fell from 40% in January to 28% in February before rebounding to 34% in April, according to Morning Consult data.
Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey said that some Latino consumers in the United States and in Mexico pulled back on their purchases of the company’s products during the first quarter after videos circulating on social media in February said, without evidence, that Coke had reported some of its own employees to US immigration authorities.
Quincey said that the videos were “completely false, but they impact the business” anyway.
McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski said during an earnings call last week that the fast-food chain didn’t see a hit from diners abroad pulling back in results during the first quarter. But the chain did note an uptick in anti-American sentiment generally, he said, especially in Canada and Northern Europe.
“What we have seen in our survey work is that there has been an increase in people in various markets saying that they’re going to be cutting back their purchase of American brands,” Kempczinski said.
Since the start of the year, Japan-based Suntory Holdings has been bracing for a hit to Jim Beam and Maker’s Mark, two American whiskey brands it owns.
Suntory expected that in 2025 American products would be “less accepted by those countries outside of the US because of first, tariffs and, second, emotion,” CEO Takeshi Niinami told the Financial Times in February.
“We are closely monitoring developments and have taken actions to assess and plan for potential risks to our business across markets,” a Suntory spokesperson told Business Insider, adding that the company has seen “demand picking up” for its American Whiskey brands so far in 2025.
Instead of buying products associated with the United States, foreign consumers could shift their spending to local brands. That’s already happening in Canada, where shoppers are eschewing US products at grocery stores and other retailers in favor of Canadian-made equivalents.
“The risk for US brands is that consumers’ growing antagonism toward the United States resulting from an onslaught of tariffs emanating from Washington will cause them to seek out alternative goods and services provided by local and foreign (non-U.S.) brands,” Morning Consult wrote in its April report.
Not all big US brands that sell abroad are feeling the same pinch.
Tapestry, the company that makes luxury purses and other accessories under the Coach and Kate Spade New York brands, said on Thursday that it wasn’t seeing any sales slowdown due to anti-American sentiment abroad.
Levi Strauss & Co., the jeans brand, said that its sales haven’t been affected either.
CFO Harmit Singh said on an earnings call in April that “we’re entrenched with the local consumers” in other countries. He added that in some international markets, Levi Strauss has been selling jeans for several decades.
“Right now, international business is fairly strong,” Singh said.
Wednesday, May 14, 2025 — This story has been updated to include a comment from Suntory sent after publication.
Record-setting Sargassum Seaweed could stink up Florida, Caribbean beaches this summer
Drone video taken on Wednesday showed clumps of seaweed covering parts of South Florida’s shoreline.
TAMPA, Fla. – As summer approaches, beachgoers may need to check an additional forecast detail before heading to the shore: the Sargassum seaweed situation.
This year is already a record for the amount of Sargassum in the central Atlantic Ocean.
“What we observed in April was far and away greater than anything the satellites have recorded over the last 25 years and presumably ever as far as what would be expected,” University of South Florida Research Assistant Professor Brian Barnes said.
Barnes is part of the small team using satellites to monitor Sargassum Seaweed. USF’s College of Marine Science Optical Oceanography Laboratory maintains the Sargassum Watch System, an outlook on current and future seaweed blooms in the Caribbean Sea and Gulf, using a suite of satellite data from NASA, NOAA and private satellites.
MEXICO UNVEILS PLAN TO TACKLE CARIBBEAN SEAWEED INVASION AT POPULAR BEACHES
The outlooks and forecasts from USF have become increasingly important each year because massive amounts of Sargassum began washing up on the shores of Florida’s east coast and the Caribbean in 2011. It’s a relatively new climate phenomenon that is not fully understood.
A pile of sargassum, or seaweed, on Key Biscayne’s coastline on Thursday, April 24. (Ashley Miznazi/The Miami Herald/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
(Getty Images)
Total amounts of seaweed in the eastern Caribbean Sea and the western Atlantic reached “surprisingly high levels,” according to the USF Sargassum Watch System. Both were 200% higher than their historical records for the month, and the combined regions were 150% higher than the historical record for April.
Prior to satellite data, a bloom of this size would have made headlines.
“Somebody would have noticed,” Barnes said.
“And we’re not yet to the peak time of the Sargassum, which is usually June. So there’s still a ton of biomass that’s kind of not really affecting anyone. It’s offshore in the tropical Atlantic right now, but a lot of it is migrating into the Caribbean and there’s a ton inside the Caribbean,” Barnes said. “Some of that will eventually make its way out and affect more US coastlines.”
While this is a new issue, some seaweed has always been there, just not in the masses we are seeing now arriving at beaches, creating a problematic issue for coastal tourism as the decomposing seaweed releases a stench best described as rotten eggs.
The whole Atlantic contains 31 million metric tons of Sargassum spread over a large area. The impacts on beaches in the Caribbean and Florida can be patchy, said Barnes. Florida’s West Coast won’t see major impacts because of how the ocean currents flow.
A map showing the average Sargassum seaweed for the month of April 2025 with warm colors representing a higher amount in the Caribbean Sea and Gulf.
(Optical Oceanography Lab at the USF College of Marine Science / FOX Weather)
Heading into Memorial Day weekend, there is a steady amount of sargassum in the Gulf region, about 200,000 metric tons – a fraction compared to the overall Atlantic Sargassum Seaweed belt. With the right combination of winds, currents and weather, a giant blob of Sargassum can end up on a Florida beach along the Atlantic coast. Local impacts are hard to predict more than a week in advance.
“A beach may get impacted, whereas a nearby beach would have absolutely nothing,” Barnes said. “So we are working towards, and this is something that it’s coming online as this season, fortuitously it’s come online as the season is a pretty bad sargassum season, is that we’ve got some of these higher resolution, the Sentinel-2 and other data sets that provide, for which we can see patches in that near shore area, that provide us a little bit more clarity on where.”
Barnes and the Sargassum Watch System team are working with additional NOAA funding this year to expand their forecasting ability. The Watch System now includes all of the U.S. waters impacted by the Sargassum belt, including the Florida Keys and eastern Florida, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.
What happens to all that seaweed?
South Florida beach communities are removing it using industrial equipment as quickly as they can ahead of the summer rush, while others have looked at the biomass as a potential business opportunity.
Barnes said he is contacted nearly every day by startups that want to use seaweed for different purposes.
Swaths of sargassum, or seaweed, washed up in Key Biscayne on Thursday, April 24 and was raked into piles to be taken to the landfill. (Ashley Miznazi/The Miami Herald/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
(Getty Images)
“There is biomass there that’s coming ashore that can have value for cosmetics and pharmaceuticals and construction materials and biofuels … but you need to get to it quickly, meaning you have to have your stuff staged,” Barnes said. “And if there are marine resources that need to be protected, setting out barriers or at least staging equipment to kind of protect the critical infrastructure, critical resources, is the reason to make that step and make some forecast of where a particular inundation might happen.”
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Barnes said the seaweed forecasting outlook is attracting attention from many different stakeholders, including fisheries, tourism groups, local governments and even the Mexican Navy.
Still, for average beachgoers, seaweed is mostly an annoyance and not a major health threat. Some with respiratory issues may have an adverse response, but it’s not as severe as red tide, another issue plaguing Florida’s coastal communities.
There is also a concern about arsenic in the seaweed tissue, so it’s not advised to handle it.
“For most people, it’s just smelly,” Barnes said.