That endless Sargassum problem

[chillyinCanada]

How To Handle A Massive Seaweed Invasion? Yucatán Towns Get Creative

 

[Saniflush]

Will be in the area next weekend and am curious to see and talk to the local folks about it.

 

[HalcyonDaze]

The main issue where it's washing up here in FL is dealing with the sargassum without impacting turtle hatching season. So far at least protecting nests and hatchlings have rightly taken priority over shoveling sargassum, but I have to wonder how something like the boat and trailer arrangement mentioned would avoid bycatch.

That said, where it piles up it's definitely nasty stuff. On seagrass monitoring events off Smathers Beach in Key West it collects between the riprap groins, and when I was last there in June the water leaking into my mask reeked of hydrogen sulfide.

 

[chillyinCanada]

Leaving it there keeps the hatchlings from being able to make it to the sea and floating beds of it at the shore line can cause them to die even if they've made it.

From what I've seen so far, the system that seems to works the best is the floating harvester. I don't know what it's really called.

 

[drbill]

We have a different Sargassum problem on the West Coast. Sargassum horneri first invaded our waters in 2004 (Catalina in 2006). I tried to get the California Dept. of Fish & Game to do something about it early on but they ignored it. Now it is found from at least Morro Bay in central California to Guadalupe Island off Baja. It has pretty much destroyed so many of my favorite dive sites as it out-competes our native giant kelp as well as other algae, and few species benefit from it. We tried getting a permit to remove it from marine protected areas but no go.

 

[Wookie]

I wonder if it's beneficial in cooling the ocean. Saw a map yesterday that the hottest part of the ocean, in the Atlantic anyway, is also loaded with Sargassum.

 

[chillyinCanada]

I wonder if it's beneficial in cooling the ocean. Saw a map yesterday that the hottest part of the ocean, in the Atlantic anyway, is also loaded with Sargassum.

That's an interesting question!

 

[tarponchik]

It's a good trap for CO2, isn't it?

 

[gopbroek]

It may cause a failure of the Meso American reef. It's not just on the surface

 

[tarponchik]

So it should be collected and...turned into a biofuel? Or composted?