MARSHFIELD (CBS) – Residents of the Green Harbor Beach area of Marshfield are not having the most pleasant of summers. The stench in the air is driving them crazy.

“It makes me sick, ” says Mary Doherty.

About a month ago, a nor’easter pushed some unusual seaweed up onto the beach, and it’s been there ever since, rotting in the sun, and attracting clouds of bugs.

WBZ NewsRadio 1030′s Bernice Corpuz reports

“My whole summer is about the grandkids, and kids, and friends coming to the beach,” says long-time resident Maizie Donnelly, “but no one wants to come this summer. It smells that bad.”

And it’s not the usual seaweed that most of us are used to. One Plymouth resident , a retired oceanographer, believes it’s a rare seaweed that usually stays far offshore.

Whatever kind it is, the town can’t clean it all up. “We removed some of it, but it takes a lot of manpower, using rakes to get it off the rocks, ” says DPW Superintendent Tom Reynolds. He also says they’re kind of handcuffed. “There are state and local environmental restrictions, that prevent us from removing it,” he says.

So now, residents are hoping that Monday’s lunar high tide will take the rotting seaweed back to where it came from.