Whose naming of the Sargasso Sea gave it its famous identity?

Christopher Columbus was among the first Europeans to record the vast floating mats of brown seaweed in the Atlantic that later gave the Sargasso Sea its name. The region is not enclosed by coastlines; instead, it is bounded by major ocean currents in the North Atlantic. Sargassum provides habitat for fish, turtles, and invertebrates in an otherwise open-ocean environment. The sea remains important in oceanography because it shows how currents can define marine regions.