THE CONTINUING presence of Sargassum seaweed in the Caribbean Sea, and elsewhere, is said to be as a result of global warming in combination with coastal housing development and the run-off therefrom. Neither of these two phenomena are likely to decrease in the near future.
With that in mind, it may be prudent to think in terms of stopping the seaweed coming ashore anywhere rather than removing same from beaches as and when it does come ashore.
In order to achieve this, urgent research will be required to identify a product/s that could be manufactured or extracted from the seaweed on a commercial basis, as well as a market(s) for same. The manufacturing or extraction process would be done at sea thereby achieving the overall objective.
There are already huge “factory” ships operating in the world’s fishing/whaling industries, and it should not be beyond “our” ability to convert one (or more) of these vessels, together with its attending trawlers, to harvest the floating seaweed and process same on the “mother” ship.
This would no doubt be a costly operation which may have to be subsidised and [funding] would have to be provided in novel ways by the Governments of those affected countries whose core industry is tourism in its many and varied forms.
Just a thought.
– CECIL L. FIELDS
