{"id":40002,"date":"2022-09-21T00:01:14","date_gmt":"2022-09-21T07:01:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/?post_type=custom_news&p=40002"},"modified":"2022-09-20T21:42:02","modified_gmt":"2022-09-21T04:42:02","slug":"besieged-by-sargassum-caribbean-islanders-are-looking-for-solutions","status":"publish","type":"custom_news","link":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/news\/besieged-by-sargassum-caribbean-islanders-are-looking-for-solutions\/","title":{"rendered":"Besieged by Sargassum, Caribbean Islanders Are Looking for Solutions"},"content":{"rendered":"

It came swiftly, almost overnight. The scattered patches of sargassum\u2014a type of brown seaweed\u2014that Troy Leacock spotted in Grand Cayman\u2019s North Sound one July afternoon had, by morning, transformed into an enormous carpet that engulfed boats and extended nearly 100 meters into the bay.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not like we never see any sargassum there,\u201d says Leacock, a Cayman Islander who runs private boat charters in the North Sound. \u201cBut you never get that huge carpet, not like what we saw that day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Within a few days, the rot kicked in. Fish floated to the surface. Wind compacted the seaweed, pushing ashore a stench so foul that it cleared the parking lot of Ron Hargrave\u2019s restaurant, Tukka West.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe water actually bubbled,\u201d Hargrave says. \u201cI\u2019ve been on the island 24 years \u2026 I\u2019d never seen fermenting water in the ocean before.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since 2011, sargassum has been intermittently clogging Caribbean coastlines in unprecedented quantities. Scientists aren\u2019t completely sure why these blooms are growing so much more potent\u2014human sewage and nutrient-rich runoff from the Amazon River, made even richer by deforestation, could be the culprits. So could changes in ocean currents triggered by warming seas.<\/p>\n

Your browser does not support the video element.<\/p><\/video>\n

Massive rafts of sargassum have been a problem for Caribbean nations for the past decade, but this is the first time the Cayman Islands\u2019 North Sound has been hit so hard. Video by Brian Phelps<\/span><\/p>\n

In the open ocean, sargassum provides habitat for hundreds of species and food for turtles. But when it chokes the coastline, building up in thick mats, it\u2019s a sea-life killer that smothers shallow-water habitats. As it rots, bacteria decomposing the seaweed strip the water of oxygen.<\/p>\n

While the problem isn\u2019t new, the search for solutions is becoming increasingly pressing.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why, when the Cayman Islands\u2019 government mobilized emergency funding to vacuum the seaweed out of the water and dispose of it on land, locals like Leacock hoped for a good outcome.<\/p>\n

From July 29 to August 1, workers using an industrial pump removed more than 260 square meters of decomposing seaweed from the sound. But the crew was forced to cut their efforts short\u2014the pump was just no match for the sargassum mats. The sargassum, said Jennifer Ahearn with the Cayman Islands\u2019 Ministry of Sustainability and Climate Resiliency in a press release, had \u201cdegraded to the point where pumping it out [was] no longer feasible.\u201d<\/p>\n

To some, the failure of the trial came as no surprise. \u201cI thought it was a token gesture,\u201d says Hargrave.<\/p>\n

With the government\u2019s failed cleanup effort, locals are left wondering what comes next.<\/p>\n

Currently, the Cayman Islands has no national sargassum response plan. The story is the same across much of the Caribbean. Around the region, local entrepreneurs are coming up with creative solutions. In Barbados, for instance, sargassum is transformed into organic compost, while in Jamaica the seaweed is fed to goats and turned into charcoal for barbecues.<\/p>\n

But entrepreneurs can\u2019t keep up with the amount of seaweed coming in, and most of the time, when sargassum is allowed to float ashore, it is raked up then left to rot in landfills. There\u2019s no question in Leacock\u2019s mind\u2014that can\u2019t be allowed to happen in the North Sound, a gateway to a 3,500-hectare mangrove wetland and critical breeding ground for marine life.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s imperative that we remove it before it hits the coast,\u201d Leacock says. Once the sargassum gets ensnared by the mangroves\u2019 tangled roots, he says, \u201cit\u2019s game over for removal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hargrave also thinks prevention is the best approach. The sargassum problem is far bigger than can be solved with a vacuum, he says. He\u2019d rather see authorities invest in emergency booms, like those used to contain oil spills, that could be deployed to redirect incoming sargassum blooms at a moment\u2019s notice.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, is taking it out of the ocean going to solve the problem? No, because there\u2019s just so much of it, and you sort of can\u2019t compete against it,\u201d says Hargrave. \u201cBut to be able to divert it at a given time, when you know that it\u2019s coming, to save it from going into the sound and doing what it did last time \u2026 that would be very beneficial.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It came swiftly, almost overnight. The scattered patches of sargassum\u2014a type of brown seaweed\u2014that Troy Leacock spotted in Grand Cayman\u2019s North Sound one July afternoon had, by morning, transformed into an enormous carpet that engulfed boats and extended nearly 100 <\/p>\n

…<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":40004,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[201],"tags":[],"acf":{"hero_video_url":null,"hero_video_caption":"","deck":"The Cayman Islands tried to vacuum sargassum from the water to unclog a popular bay. It didn\u2019t work. Now, locals are left wondering what will.","authors_group":[{"by_group":"by","contributors_group":[40009]}],"word_count_override":"","podbean1":"","podbean2":"","redirect":"","geolocation":{"address":"Cayman Islands","lat":19.3133,"lng":-81.2546,"zoom":14,"place_id":"ChIJKaq4Lz6GJY8RXnFwh9PERXA","name":"Cayman Islands","country":"Cayman Islands","country_short":"KY"},"related":[25198,24016],"twitterimage":40005,"facebookimage":40003,"twitterdescription":"","edited":[15491],"factchecked":"","code":"","no_old_story_flag":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/40002"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/custom_news"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/40002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40036,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/40002\/revisions\/40036"}],"acf:post":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profiles\/15491"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/24016"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/25198"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}