What is Sargassum?
Sargassum is a brown seaweed with berry-like air bladders, you will see variations of the species distributed around the tropical oceans of the world
Over the past 10 years, it has become a major issue in many popular coastal tourist destinations around the world as a result of excessive blooming seasons.
This has caused a variety of environmental, economic and social issues, such as:
- Unpleasant smell
- Suffocation of fish being caught up in the seaweed
- Damage to the tourist industry
- Huge economic costs for removal of sargassum
Sargassum has gotten worse as a result of a process called Eutrophication.
Eutrophication
Eutrophication is the process of a body of water having excessive amounts of nutrients, such as phosphorous and nitrogen. This can lead to excessive growth of certain species of flora, such as seaweed.
Eutrophication has become more common in our environment, as a result of the increase in factories and the release of pollutants from factories.
The pollutants are released from these factories and absorbed by the oceans, therefore causing eutrophication to occur, due to the injections of nutrients.
Environmental Damage of Sargassum
The swamping of beaches from the seaweed comes with a variety of issues.
The decomposition of sargassum leaves a foul smell and produces sulfuric acid, which can kill seagrass. Seagrass is necessary as it provides a vital food source for native marine life such as turtles.
It also serves other purposes like keeping the sand in place and reducing coastal erosion.
Excessive Sulphur exposure is also linked to many Neurological, digestive; and respiratory disorders
The influx of sargassum can also result in the trapping and suffocation of marine life that get caught in the seaweed and swept onto the shore.
Economic Damages of Sargassum
A study has estimated that around 20 million tons of sargassum existed, in 2018, over a 5,000-mile stretch of the Atlantic Ocean.
In Quintana Roo in Mexico tourism has declined by 35% as a result of Sargassum. Clearing all the sargassum was estimated to have cost the Mexican president cost $2.7m (£2m). The enlisting of the country’s navy was also needed to help with the massive clean-up.
Solutions to Sargassum
Some see the mass influx of sargassum as an economic opportunity, as it can be used sargassum can potentially be used as a biofuel. However, more research needs to go into making this a reality.
Sargassum has also been used to produce building materials. This has been trialled and so far seemed successful from a Mexican native from Puerto Morelos. The process appears to remove the smell of seaweed too, in case you were wondering!
An organisation called the Biomaya Initiative, hire locals to collect the seaweed, clean and remove excess plastics from it and mix the processed sargassum with ingredients such as glycerin and honey to produce soap which they sell for $2 (£1.50) a bar to hotels, hospitals and shops in the area.
Conclusion
Eutrophication stemming from practices, such as deforestation and pollution has created a huge knock-on effect socially,m environmentally and economically, in terms of the recent influx of seaweed over the past decade.
Costing local economies millions of £ worth of time and resources to remedy this. Whilst it reduces tourism numbers and puts local businesses in difficult financial positions.
However, solutions as problematic as people are, we do know how to generate innovative solutions to environmental problems when we want to!
With the conversion of sargassum into construction materials, biogas and even soap. There’s nothing that can stop us when we want to make a difference!
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