Sargassum bloom impacts in the millions of dollars
If you’ve spent time around the Caribbean or the western Atlantic in recent years, you may already have encountered sargassum - the brown, free-floating seaweed. Out at sea, sargassum plays an important ecological role, providing habitat for fish, turtles, and other marine life. But when it washes ashore in large amounts, it becomes a very different problem.
A new study by researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and the University of Rhode Island puts numbers on just how serious that problem has become. Looking at Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, and Florida’s Atlantic coast, the researchers estimate that recurring sargassum inundation events are already causing multi-million-dollar losses each year. Along Florida’s Atlantic coast, those losses could reach into the billions.
The impacts are felt most strongly in tourism, recreation, and fisheries. Beaches can become unusable, fishing operations disrupted, and visitors deterred, with knock-on effects for local businesses and livelihoods. By combining satellite observations, long-term monitoring, and economic data, the study shows that sargassum seasons are starting earlier and lasting longer, increasing both the frequency and severity of impacts.
Sargassum monitoring and forecasting tools are improving, which is really important for helping impacted communities prepare and respond to damaging sargassum blooms, but the researchers stress that more investment in these tools, as well as infrastructure to help communities clean up when a sargassum bloom hits, is urgent.
Read the paper Economic impacts of sargassum events in Puerto Rico, USVI, and coastal Florida (paywalled)
