PHILIPSBURG — St. Maarten has already plenty of problems to deal with and now another one should be added to this seemingly endless list: sargassum. According to a rather alarming report on the CNN website, this year there is already 31 million tons of seaweed drifting in the Atlantic ocean – 40 percent more than the previous record from 2022.
“Sargassum hurts ecosystems and economies wherever its overgrown arms reach,” Stephanie Elam writes in the CNN-article.
Brian Lapointe, a research professor at Florida Atlantic University Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute notes that sargassum is “a harmful algal bloom when it comes ashore in excessive biomass.” Lapointe says that there have been “excessive inundation events” all around the Caribbean region, the Gulf and the South Florida region since 2011.
St. Maarteners living near places where sargassum ends up on the beach know its negative impact very well. When the weed rots on the shore it emits harmful gases and an infamous stench.
So why is all this happening? Elam writes that it is due to rising ocean temperatures that are caused by climate change. There is yet another explanation: the presence of an excess of nitrogen in the water. Lapointe says that this is a key factor behind this year’s “monster bloom.”
That nitrogen could come from the atmosphere carried in the air “from the burning of fossil fuels or from dust from the Sahara Desert.” But the main source is something else: agricultural fertilizers. These nitrogen-rich fertilizers are making their way into the Mississippi and Amazon rivers and end up in the Atlantic Ocean.
That sargassum inundation is harmful to tourism-driven economies is beyond any doubt. St. Maarten takes pride in offering its visitors 37 beaches, but the attraction of those beaches disappears completely once they are flooded with stinking sargassum. The bad news: there is not much St. Maarten can do about it.
Rotting sargassum is not good for the environment either. Its awful stench stems from the toxic hydrogen sulfide gas.
The Mexican Yucatán Peninsula is located in the heart of the sargassum belt. Mara Lezama, the Governor of Quintana Roo, a state in this peninsula, has called in the Mexican Navy to collect the seaweed in the water before it reaches the beaches. Another measure in the fight against the toxic seaweed is the installation of a 6-mile barrier in the water. These barriers are similar to booms that contain oil spills.
The sargassum is not just a threat to the wellbeing of humans; it also creates health problems for animals. Elam quotes Christian Appendini, a professor at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico as saying: “When it arrives in the coastal area it created a shadow from the sun. All the life below it is not getting sunlight and it begins to affect the ecosystem and many things die.”
However, it is not all bad news if we look a bit further into the future. Research is underway to use sargassum for biofuel, building bricks or membranes for cleaning water. Another option is to replace plastic with sargassum. Lapointe: “Harvesting sargassum and producing a biodegradable product that could replace single use plastic would begin to restore the oceans regarding the serious plastic pollution that we are seeing.”
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