Collaroy beach closed because of too much seaweed

ONE of Sydney’s most popular beaches will be closed for the long weekend for a pretty bizarre reason. Here’s why.

INCREDIBLE images showing a 2m-high wall of seaweed washed up onto Sydney’s northern beaches yesterday have stunned locals and beachgoers everywhere.

Almost as tall as one of the beach’s lifeguards, the smelly, “unsightly” but natural occurrence has closed Collaroy Beach, prompting thousands of shares and comments on social media.

In bad timing for this weekend’s Easter break, the popular beach is closed until further notice, with Northern Beaches Council reporting that most of the seaweed would be naturally removed by high tides in coming days.

“This is a natural occurrence and often happens after large seas,” Northern Beaches Mayor Michael Regan told news.com.au.

Northern Beaches Council lifeguard Liam Arms with a mountain of seaweed that has forced the closure of Collaroy Beach.

“The weed gets dislodged by large swells such as we have had over the last couple of weeks.

“Normally with the large swells we lose sand.

“The seaweed is nature’s way of rebuilding the beach as it acts as foundations for the sand to be collected and in turn re-establishes the beach front.

“It also is great food for beach critters and the local ecosystem.”

He said the beach would be monitored and reopened as soon as possible.

“Collaroy Beach is closed and may be closed this long weekend due to large amounts of seaweed,” the council told beachgoers on social media last night.

“This is a completely natural occurrence and we understand it can be smelly and unsightly but seaweed is a food source, home and shelter to many amazing sea creatures.

“It’s likely much of the seaweed will be removed by the high tides over the next few days but we’re keeping an eye on it and will open the beach as soon as we can.”

But residents called on council to do something about it, with some saying they could smell it just driving past.

It’s unfortunate timing, but the beach will remain closed until the tides clear the seaweed.

“Collaroy is a beautiful beach that deserves to have the seaweed removed from time to time,” one resident wrote.

“I understand that it is a natural occurrence and a good food source and shelter for sea animals but there is that much there at the moment that sea animals will end up as obese as quite a few humans!”

Other residents commented that they had never seen it that bad before, while others made light of the situation, saying “Welcome to Australia” and “That’s a lot of seaweed!”

Collaroy local James Mills said he’d never seen that much seaweed in one place before.

“I had to duck down to the pool yesterday to test out a snorkel quickly and I saw it — it probably comes up to chest height.

“It’s a hell of a lot of seaweed.

“There was a lot on the water too — there was definitely no one swimming or sunbaking, that’s for sure.”