“Pressing
future questions include the ecological impacts of inundation events on coral
reefs, sea turtles and fisheries.
Continued Sargassum field observations are essential to these efforts.”
Comment made by
researchers at SEA (Sea Education Association) on the Sargassum seaweed washing
up on Caribbean and African shores
Seaweed
seems to love washing up on Caribbean and even African shores!
In
fact, Sargassum seaweed has been washing up on the shores of Jamaica and other Caribbean countries since July of 2015 as reported in the article “Stinking
mats of seaweed piling up on Caribbean beaches”, published Monday, August
10, 2015, The Jamaica Observer.
Countries
like Mexico, Jamaica and Barbados have been struggling to remove the mats of
brown Sargassum which smell badly when it begins to rot in to hot sun.
Many
beaches have cancelled visits by tourists, with NEPA (National Environment and
Planning Agency) allocating as much a JA$5 million to clean up the Sargassum
seaweed as reported in the article “Smelly
Brown Seaweed Plagues Beaches, Government Allocates $5m Towards Cleanup”,
Published Saturday October 24, 2015, The
Jamaica Gleaner.
NEPA,
however, has advised against eating the seaweed, as it's not known to be
nutritious for humans but eat but makes great fertilizer a noted in the article
“Seaweed
no threat But
don’t eat it, says NEPA”, published Wednesday,
August 12, 2015, The Jamaica Observer.
since May of 2015, countries
such as Guadeloupe and Barbados have been dealing with the
headache of cleanup as reported in the article “Barbados
struggling to clear seaweed piles from beaches”, published Tuesday, May 05,
2015, The Jamaica Observer.
Meanwhile
the Government of Grenada has plan to sell it to the Chinese as they can make
it into fertilizer pending the results of research done by St George's
University as reported in the article “Grenada
mulls exporting seaweed to china”, published Wednesday, July 22, 2015, The Jamaica Observer.
So
what exactly is this Sargassum Seaweed and where exactly does it come from?
More importantly, when it this going to end?
The Sargassum Seaweed
Problem – Global Warming is making Seaweed Bloom
The
Sargassum, which is Portuguese for Grape based on its small air-filled
bladders, is a floating brownish algae that is endemic to the Sargasso Sea, a
2 million-square-mile (3 million-square-kilometre) body of warm water in the
North Atlantic.
This
sea is unique in that the Sargasso Sea is
defined only by ocean currents. It lies within the Northern Atlantic
Subtropical Gyre with the Gulf Stream establishes the Sargasso Sea's
western boundary. To the north, the Sargasso Sea is
bordered by the North Atlantic Current with the canary Current on the East and
the North Atlantic Equatorial Current on the south.
The
Sargasso Sea
is home to the free-floating Sargassum Seaweed and is a major nursery for a lot
of marine plants and animals such as the mahi-mahi, tuna, billfish, eels,
shrimp, crabs and sea turtles. These creatures all se the Sargassum algae to
spawn, feed or hide from predators, making them as important as coral reefs.
Apparently
what has happened is that Global warming has made conditions quite right for
these algae and they have thus begun to reproduce at an alarming rate.
Scientists speculate that additional nutrients from the South America's Amazon
and Orinoco Rivers mixing with warmer ocean temperatures is causing blooms of
the Sargassum algae.
This
is so much so that mats of the seaweed are washing up as far away as the
Caribbean and even Sierra Leone and Ghana and wherever else the ocean currents
seem to carry the brown seaweed.
SEA Sargasso Seaweed
Research - Sargassum Seaweed bloom largest ever of a rare species
Recent
research published in the September 2015 issue of the journal Oceanography by
Drs. Jeffrey Schell, Amy Siuda, and Deb Goodwin of the SEA (Sea Education
Association), have revealed some undersign information about these brown algae
invaders as reported in the article “SEA Research reveals
dominance of once-rare seaweed form”, published 2015-11-18, Go-Jamaica.
Sargassum seaweed invasion unprecedented, researchers say | Caribbean360 https://t.co/DYzeVbhSFC pic.twitter.com/IV3K3wbokO
— Caribbean360 (@Caribbean360) November 19, 2015
The
SEA is a leading ocean education and research institution based in Woods Hole,
Massachusetts, has been researching previous seaweed blooms both in 2014 and
2015. They have been studying Sargassum in the field for about four (4) decades
in an effort to understand more fully the ecosystems that rely upon this
floating seaweed.
Their
data sets are unique as they are one of the few oceanographic institutions that
have long-term quantitative record of Sargassum abundance before and during
these Caribbean inundation events. Data
on the seaweed was collected by the SEA faculty with the help of the
institution’s 135-foot tall sailing ship, the SSV Corwith Cramer, from November
2014 to May 2015 and their merry crew made up mostly of SEA Semester
undergraduate students.
During
the period spanning from November 2014 to May 2015, the SSV Corwith Cramer
travelled from the Canary Islands, traversed the Sargasso Sea and
Western Tropical Atlantic to the Lesser Antilles, and then sailed the Eastern
Caribbean before heading to New England.
The
researchers at SEA have discovered that the Sargassum Seaweed consists of three
(3) distinct species:
1.
S. natans I Parr
2.
S. fluitans Parr
3.
S. natans VIII Parr
S.
natans I Parr and S. fluitans Parr were the most common in the North Atlantic,
Caribbean Sea, and Gulf of Mexico but S. natans VIII Parr, which is mostly
found in the Western Tropical Atlantic, Eastern Caribbean, and Antilles is a
rare species.
In
fact, the Sargassum seaweed found in the Sargasso Sea is
mainly the S. natans I Parr but the samples collected from the Caribbean are
mainly of the rare S. natans VIII Parr species.
This
implies that the S. natans VIII Parr is coming from somewhere else, most likely
the southern boundary of the Sargasso Sea
known as the North Equatorial Recirculation Region.
Also
based on the data that they have collected, the Sargassum blooms involved in
the 2014-2015 Caribbean inundation are quite amazing:
1.
10 times greater in samples collected
during autumn 2014 than 2011-12 inundation event
2.
300 times greater than that of any other
autumn over the last two (2) decades of SEA research
This
is beginning to look like something that will happen on a regular basis!
Sargassum Seaweed makes
great Fertilizer – How the Summer of 2016 may see a bigger Bloom
So
what to do with all this Sargassum seaweed? Since it’s organic, it can be
collected and decomposed to make nitrogen-rich fertilizer, which would be a
boon to Jamaican farming.
This
idea was suggested by National Coordinator of the UNDP (United Nations
Development Programme)'s GEF Small Grants Programme David Bynoe in the article
“Make use
of seaweed”, published July 1, 2015 by Marlon Madden, Barbados Today who points to the
seaweed as an opportunity that the Caribbean islands can take advantage of toe
make revenue.
This
can be done using solar vacuum pyrolysis as described in my blog article
entitled “How
to upgrade your Solar Desalinator to a Solar Cooker and make a Solar Foundry
for Vacuum Pyrolysis”.
Already
several companies have created a business out of collecting the hard-to-remove
Sargassum seaweed as noted in the article “Stinky
Seaweed Spurs Invention”, published November 30, 2015 By Rebekah Kebede, The Beachwood Reporter.
Jamaica
needs to undertake research into possibilities for the seaweed as with global
warming making conditions favourable for the Sargassum seaweed. Expect seaweed
blooms of this nature to become a more frequent event in the coming months
towards the Summer 2016.
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