Moderate sargassum is present today. Resort frontages may be cleaned, but independent beaches can have visible wrack. Ask locally which areas are clearest.
South Beach faces east into the Atlantic Ocean on Miami Beach, a barrier island separating Biscayne Bay from the open ocean. Its east-facing exposure means it receives Florida's seasonal sargassum from the Atlantic.
Florida's Atlantic coast sees seasonal sargassum from May through August as the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt drifts into the Gulf Stream. South Beach can see patchy accumulation during this window: conditions vary week to week. The gulf-facing west coast of Florida (Clearwater, Siesta Key) does not experience this issue.
Miami Beach was a swampy mangrove island with no permanent residents until 1912, when developer Carl Fisher used hydraulic dredges to pump sand from Biscayne Bay and literally build the island upward from the wetlands: one of the most audacious real-estate engineering projects in American history. The Art Deco hotels lining Ocean Drive were built in a burst of construction between 1923 and 1940, creating the largest collection of Art Deco architecture in the world, now a National Historic Landmark. During Prohibition, Miami's Biscayne Bay was a moonlit highway for rum runners making nightly runs from the Bahamas: the same warm, clear water that now draws tourists once carried contraband whiskey in the holds of fast boats.
"Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me.": Psalm 42:7Live seaweed levels, surf, water quality and hotel deals — updated daily. Free.
View Live Conditions →