So, no oil yet, but there are epic amounts of Junegrass! I’m shocked!
Ok, so this pea soup style slimy algae apparently shows up every year here on in Panama City Beach every year in June. I’ve seen it before, but never in such unbelievable amounts!
After doing a bit of reading, it seems that this green algae blooms every year sometimes as early as April, and will come and go throughout the summer. The name “June Grass” comes from the common appearance in the month of June. It’s harmless, just slimy and annoying. Like everything else in nature, it serves as purpose providing food and a place for small fish to lay eggs. It also plays an important role in ‘beach building’. I saw this first-hand over the course of a few days. The rocky looking piles of June Grass in the pictures below slowly became assimilated by the dry sand.
One of the craziest features of the June Grass piles on the beach was the creation of sort of a quicksand around the piles. I guess the algae/sand mixture holds a lot of water…..when you step on the sand around the piles, you sink in up to your knees!
