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 seas and charted all oceans. Verne would have known of Matthew Maury's international fame and perhaps Maury's French ancestry. References are made to other such Frenchmen as Jean-François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse, a famous explorer who was lost while circumnavigating the globe; Dumont D'Urville, the explorer who found the remains of Lapérouse's ship; and Ferdinand Lesseps, builder of the Suez Canal and the nephew of the sole survivor of Lapérouse's expedition. The "Nautilus" seems to follow the footsteps of these men: she visits the waters where Lapérouse was lost; she sails to Antarctic waters and becomes stranded there, just