Recently I found myself amusedly translating the word “blob” to my wife, a native Spanish speaker. “I think it comes from a movie,” I told her hesitantly. “The Blob is a giant pink mass that engulfs everything in its path." I conjure an image of a steaming gelatinous ooze rolling through town, smothering the villagers, inspiring panic.
The blob is not just a movie. Lately, I get a nearly continuous daily reminder of the 21st century, real-life blob: the massive arrival of sargassum seaweed in the Caribbean,
Mexico, and Florida.
My life and work have been invaded by blob talk. “A Continent-Sized Blob is Coming for Florida!” declares one headline. “Stinky seaweed bloom wider than US heads for Florida and Mexico” pronounces another.
I get assailed by questions and suggestions of what to do with the sargassum blob. Build bricks out of it. Feed it to cows. Train fish to eat it. Tell fishers it’s an aphrodisiac so they harvest it. Sink it in the ocean!
I take the kids for a walk on the beach near our house and we are assaulted by the pungent smell of rotting seaweed. “Yuck,” my toddler says. “Sargassum.” He annunciates the strange word clearer than he can say “Sponge Bob.”
Even when the blob is absent from the beach, we suffer from “Post Sargassum Stress Disorder” (PSSD). We picture that reddish mass covering the sand and bobbing in our usually turquoise sea. We imagine its sulfur stink in our noses. Sargassum floats in my dreams.
What exactly is the “Great sargassum blob” and how did I get thrust into the frontlines in the war on sargassum? What, if anything, can be done about it?
For the last decade plus, sargassum management has become a major part of my job. As the sustainability guy at a Dominican beach resort, a large part of my time is now dedicated to keeping sargassum from hitting our beaches, scooping it out of the water, and experimenting with ways of turning it into something useful. I observe it firsthand, I research it, I talk to experts and entrepreneurs about it. I develop projects to turn sargassum into different products. I serve on the national sargassum council and speak regularly at meetings and conferences about it. I am haunted by sargassum.
I decided to write a short primer to share hard-earned insights and practical wisdom from my personal experience confronting the sargassum blob at my job at Grupo Puntacana in the Dominican Republic. I hope to share strategies for others facing this crisis. Or to provide a shoulder to cry on for my fellow sargassum survivors. Think of this primer as my personal sargassum catharsis, to heal some of my enduring emotional sargassum wounds. To perform sargassum exorcism of sorts.
One thing is clear. The sargassum blob is a flashing neon billboard announcing the consequences of the destruction human beings have and continue to inflict on our planet. It is a precursor to the many natural, unnatural and downright weird catastrophes to come. Sargassum, if it could speak as powerfully as it smells, is telling humans that there is no free lunch. Taking a sledgehammer to the natural systems the Earth has so artfully evolved to sustain us, means unleashing new forces that threaten our existing way of life.
So buckle up friends, living on a warmed, degraded planet is going to be a bumpy
ride. The sargassum blob is just the beginning.
Jake’s Sargassum Primer
What is the Great Sargassum Blob?
The great sargassum blob is a newly formed mass of sargassum seaweed, formally named the “Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt” (GASB). Beginning in 2011, sargassum started showing up as an unwelcomed, surprise guest in places where it wasn’t previously common. In the ensuing decade, a once benign sargassum patch has grown into a gigantic 5,500-mile long seaweed monstrosity. It is so massive it forms a continuous algae conveyor belt that loops from the Sargassum Sea in the northern Atlantic to the shores of West Africa before looping westward once again towards South America, drifting northward towards the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico and back to the Sargassum Sea. The GASB has become the world’s largest macroalgal bloom and its presence is devastating island economies, ecosystems, and shorelines in its path. Here's what the experts have to say about the GASB in Science.
What's so bad about sargassum?
The massive arrival of sargassum in the Caribbean, Mexico and southern United States has become an ecological and economic crisis. Annually thousands of tons of sargassum end up on beaches and shorelines, ruining the possibility of beach tourism, impacting local ecosystems, and costing communities, tourism businesses and local governments tens of millions of dollars in beach cleanup and sargassum containment efforts.
No tourist wants to step over mounds of seaweed to get to the sea nor swim covered in itchy algae. Once it hits the shore and begins to decompose, it releases gas that smells like rotten eggs, attracts flies, affects the color and quality of the water, and can even cause respiratory problems. The masses of sargassum in the ocean can harm marine ecosystems such as seagrass beds and coral reefs, as well as disrupt recreational boating and fishing.
The massive arrival of sargassum is not just an aestetic issue or a sporadic nuisance. It is a crisis that threatens the future of the ecology and economy of the Caribbean and other impacted coastal areas.
How did you become such a sargassum guru?
As Vice President of Sustainability at Puntacana Resort & Club in the Dominican Republic, my job is to find solutions to complex environmental challenges. A large part of my time is now dedicated to keeping sargassum from hitting our beaches, scooping it out of the water, and experimenting with ways of turning it into something useful. This video summarizes some of my experience with sargasssum.
Is sargassum pure evil?
Ironically, when contained within its normal range, Sargassum is a unique and fascinating floating habitat with enormous economic, ecological, and even global benefits. Until recently, sargassum spent much of its lifecycle confined to the Sargasso Sea, a vast area the size of Texas off the coast of Bermuda. Rather than a threat, sargassum was considered a critical and threatened floating habitat. The Sargasso Sea Commission was formed in 2014 to safeguard the sea as vital habitat of global importance.
Occasionally sargassum would hitchhike on different oceanic jet streams, globe-trotting from one sea to another. The majority of sargassum, however, was contained in the Sargasso Sea, providing innumerable benefits to marine creatures and the planet in general. Its hard to imagine for many, but sargassum was once considered a net positive for the planet.
Like coral reefs and kelp forests, the Sargassum Sea provides essential habitat, breeding, feeding and spawning grounds. It is also a carbon sink, functioning as a giant atmospheric sponge, sopping up heat-trapping gases and storing them as seaweed. As human caused climate change accelerates, sargassum could potentially help humans combat climate change. So no, sargassum is not evil, but it is quickly becomes catastrophic when it shows up on shores and beaches in the Caribbean and Mexico.
What caused the Sargassum blob in the first place?
Theories attempting to explain the Sargassum blog are almost as abundant as the seaweed itself. According to different sources, the recent spike in sargassum could be caused by global climate change, changing ocean currents, El Niño weather events, Saharan dust clouds, nutrients from Brazilian-Amazon farms, or as a side effect of dispersants used during the British Petroleum (BP) oil spill clean-up in the Gulf of Mexico.
Each idea shares elements of modern science fiction, but all are within the realm of scientific plausibility. The most recent science points to the total volume of sargassum in the GASB increasing due to nutrients found off the coast of South America. Agricultural run-off and nutrient-rich sediments from deforested landscapes run off into the Amazon basin, providing a nearly unlimited supply of nitrogen, phosphorous and other yummy fertilizers the sargassum can gorge on. As the overall blob grows, the drifting sargassum spreads into new regions it previously passed by.
It is not clear exactly what happened prior to 2011 that started this sargassum surge, but now that the conveyor belt is rolling, the overall amount increases every year. As the GASB has more sargassum, it spills out into new locations and expands its range in existing sites already confronting it.
Can sargassum be turned into anything useful?
Asking if sargassum can be made into anything useful is like asking if it’s possible to set up a colony on Mars. We’ll never know unless we invest in research and development. You don’t land on Mars by talking about it, it takes vast sums of patient investment.
Since the sargassum crisis began in 2011, the cost of removing it from beaches, disposing of it, installing barriers and general cleanup efforts have surpassed hundreds of millions of dollars (not including the eventual cost of nourishing and restoring beaches eroded by sargassum removal). The amount of time and money spent at conferences, meetings, and emergency sargassum meetings is massive.
However, only a tiny fraction of these resources has been invested in R&D to transform sargassum into products, goods, and services. Recently an official from the Dominican government lamented that there simply is no commercial scale use for sargassum at this time. What he didn’t mention was that the Dominican government has invested a pittance in discovering these potential uses. The same could be said for most countries and tourist destinations impacted by sargassum.
Researchers and entrepreneurs have done preliminary work for several use cases: fertilizers and bio-stiumulants for agriculture, biogas and biofuels, animal feed, bioplastics, and as inputs for cosmetics and other high value products. Unless there is real, sustained investment behind these efforts, we may spend another decade wondering what to do about sargassum.
How many times have you received this video and is it a real solution?
I have received this video no less than 30 times! I visited Omar in Puerto Morelos in 2021 and love his story and enthusiasm and envy his ability to make viral sargassum content. But Sargablock is a small-scale, artesanal solution for an industrial-scale sargassum catastrophe. Hopefully some day a sargassum brick industry will be part of a viable solution for sargassum but at present, it is just a really good story.
Where Can I Learn More About Sargassum?
Since the sargassum blob began over a decade ago, a number of important sources of sargassum information have become available. Here are the ones I find most useful, informative, and up-to-date.
The Hub provides information about Sargassum in the Tropical Atlantic, including its ecological and economic importance, the latest in monitoring and forecasting, management, ongoing research, and sargassum news.
SaWs is designed to use satellite data and numerical models to detect and track pelagic Saragassum in near-real time.
The Sargassum Podcast hosted by marine educators and scientists with arange of expertise in Sargassum and Coastal Communities. The podcasts
interviews scientists, entrepreneurs, managers, community project leaders,
government officials, artists, fishermen, people working in the tourism sector.
and entrepreneurs on how they experience Sargassum. I was honored to be speak to fellow sargazologists on the podcast.