Sargasso Sea debris can absorb toxic chemicals from ocean pollution, potentially poisoning anything that eats it. The Sargasso Sea is often portrayed in literature and the media as an area of mystery. The Sargasso Sea features in classic fantasy stories by William Hope Hodgson, such as his novel "The Boats of the "Glen Carrig"" (1907), Victor Appleton's Don Sturdy novel "Don Sturdy in the Port of Lost Ships: Or, Adrift in the Sargasso Sea", and several related short stories. Jules Verne's "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" describes the Sargasso Sea and gives an account of its formation. The Sargasso Sea is
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea an extensive bibliography, appendices and a wide-ranging introduction studying the novel from a literary perspective. In particular, his original research on the two manuscripts studies the radical changes to the plot and to the character of Nemo forced on Verne by the first publisher, Jules Hetzel. The national origin of Captain Nemo was changed in most movie realizations; in nearly all picture-based works following the book Nemo was made into a European. However, he was represented as an Indian by Omar Sharif in the 1973 European miniseries "The Mysterious Island". Nemo is also depicted as Indian in a silent film