DoE predicts bad year for sargassum
(CNS): The troublesome seaweed that has plagued Caribbean beaches for several years now is back in Cayman and the Department of Environment predicts that this could be another very bad year for sargassum on the local shoreline. Last year government invested significant public cash into trying to keep beaches clean without eroding them and created a task force to work on a long-term strategy to prevent the build-up.
But given the current situation, it is not clear what the government plans to do, if anything, to deal with it this season.
DoE Deputy Director Timothy Austin said that the situation on the beaches is going to get worse as the summer goes on.
“Unfortunately, it’s that time of year where the sargassum stockpiles in the Atlantic, and then it makes its way into the Caribbean,” he said.”It’s the seasonal beginning and it looks like we’re in for another bad year based on the predictions that we’re seeing from the satellite measuring.”
Experts in the field studying sargassum believe that around four million tonnes of the problematic seaweed washed up on beaches in this region in April alone. Then this weekend some 500 tonnes of it smothered the southeast coast of Mexico when tropical storm Cristóbal made landfall.
However, the anticipated avalanche of the seaweed on local shores may not be a major priority this year for government as it deals with issues surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic.
It is expected that Cayman’s borders will be closed to all visitors until the end of the year and government will have to continue to prop up the collapsed economy, so it is unlikely there will be any spare cash for new projects to tackle the sargassum problem.
Oceanfront property owners who want to mitigate financial loss through staycations over the summer and beachfront bars and restaurants now allowed to serve outside may want to clean up the smelly and unsightly seaweed. But this could add another problem to a long list this year for the Cayman Islands because removing the sargassum could result in major erosion to the already depleted beaches.
Too much coastal development has already taken a toll on many local beaches and removing large quantities of sargassum adds to the erosion.
The DoE has created a set of guidelines for clearing the beach, which requires people who plan to use machinery rather than clear the sargassum by hand to contact them. Hand-raking is considered the safest and most environmentally-friendly way to clear the beach and no special permission is needed.
However, the best solution is leaving the seaweed where it is. “The experience in locations that have left the sargassum on the beach is that it will eventually get washed away or buried in the next storm, with rain easing the smell. Leaving sargassum on the beach has proven to be the simplest and lowest cost approach, also helping to nourish the beach and stabilize the shoreline,” the DoE guidelines state.
See the full DoE guidelines on removing sargassum here.
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Category: Marine Environment, Science & Nature
It is great free fertilizer. Moving it is classified as hard work so very few have the ability to do it here without prepayed heavy equipment.
Sargassum should not be used as fertilizer, it is full of harmful heavy metals.
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/high-levels-of-arsenic-heavy-metals/
Did you even read the article? It says not to eat it. Earth is made up of Harmful heavy metals too. Do you eat that?
Can someone please read the last paragraph of the article and then explain to me why Government is using a bob cat to remove the sargassum at the South Sound board walk?
Exactly! We should be planting mangroves in the sargassum not removing moving it!
It would be better to net the sargassum at sea and not let it reach the beach at all.
Oh please, stop it with sensible ideas. This is the Cayman Islands.
Perhaps we can have the new regiment just shoot at it for target practice?
#ColdBlackEyes.
DOE makes this prediction after the south coast gets completely blanketed in it hahaha
On a serious note, there needs to be a better way to remove it from the beaches. We cannot afford to use heavy machinery to scrape it off the beaches, because it takes so much sand with it. Is it not possible for the machinery to push the seaweed back into the sea where it can be rinsed before being removed?
More like.. turtle nests could be destroyed
Let private citizens clean their own beaches. With no tourists we need to save money.
With no cruise ships the litter in the sea has disappeared. Yayyy.
Rinsed, of what? Sand? I don’t think there are any specially rigged boats here to skim this off the sea surface, but that might be an idea for someone.
Barbados had one specially built…$300k launched with fanfare last week. Does t look like it would hold much though.
https://www.barbadosadvocate.com/news/harvested-seaweed-help-industries
Yup. That’s the rub. Any ‘catch it at sea’ solutions so far cost more than ‘rake it up afterwards’ solutions.
Boats are available at about $350-$500K each. They can harvest from the sea before it reaches shore, and then the sargassum could be used to produce fertilisers, ethanol and the like. I was all over CNS about this for the last couple of years to no avail yet. Got the business plan, just no $.
Yes there are. They cost $350 to $500k each and are in use elsewhere. I’ve been pushing for us to get at least one for a very long time now, but apparently we prefer throwing good money after bad.
Fighting the ever changing natural forces of this planet. Guess who will win.
With the Atlantic Ocean getting warmer and warmer every year the situation will get worse not better in the future. Will become the norm every June for a number of months.
Satellite analysis doesn’t look any worse than last year, and definitely not as bad as 2018.
https://optics.marine.usf.edu/projects/SaWS/pdf/Sargassum_outlook_2020_bulletin05_USF.pdf
Mexico and CARIFTA nations need to band together and ask Sierra Leone what’s going on in Freetown and Yawri Bay to generate this annual menace. Is it caused by dusty saharan air, deforestation, iron ore runoff or what?
Stop the crazies at the DOE wasting millions on killing iguanas when the nett result has been minimal, especially since lockdown.
The iguana cull is purely a lesson in futility and politics, it will never rid the islands of green iguanas, it may even have the opposite effect as nature rapidly fills the void made by culling.
If people don’t want their plants eaten, or crap in their pools, call a pest controller and pay for it yourself.
south sound smells..but people keep buying.
Not as bad as the garbage in other districts….
Too much deference is given to the Turtles when dealing with this weed.
Oh no, shut everything down, lock everybody up!
since we have no tourists no need to waste any money cleaning up for now. Private people can clean their own beach’s
Further, as long as it washes up (which it is at the moment) it will not smell and nourishes the beach and native vegetation. Leave it be.