This was man?s first reported contact with the Sargasso Sea, a unique, weed-covered, oval-shaped area in the North Atlantic. It was so named by Portuguese sailors, who thought the weeds looked like the grapes they called salgazo. The phenomenon of a sea covered by weeds was so strange that it soon gave birth to legends of hidden monsters that preyed on ships and of weeds so dangerous that ships passing through them would be dragged to a watery grave many fathoms below.
http://bit.ly/d4YPkBA fascinating article about these islands.
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