TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums British Virgin Islands Hope it stays away from the BVI!

This is a photo of the beach at Cow Wreck on February 1, 2023. I have never seen a mass of sargassum like this before late May. This year is going to be a nightmare.

I could not believe the amount we encountered sailing and in/around certain areas in late Jan/early Feb. Earlier thread had some other sobering pics. I cringe thinking what late spring/summer may be like…..and there really isn’t much that can be done to mitigate it.

I have read it makes good fertilizer. Am thinking of having our gardener put some buckets of it in the concrete trench on our property until the salt washes out.

@RatmansWife - I had read that all attempts to convert the huge masses of washed-up sargassum into fertilizer had failed. And wherever it dries, it will stink up everything downwind of it. The first time I smelled it decomposing on a beach I thought someone's sewage system had spilled.

No good for fertilizer as it has too many heavy metals in it. We bought a beach cleaner to deal with the seaweed. Works well but of course does require weekly cleaning as well as the upfront cost About 100k

It arrived 3 months early in the Riviera Maya and it is a mess there…

Zanshin, have you seen it down islands any this year? We’re heading to the Windwards in April.

Yes, unfortunately I have. I keep my boat in St. Lucia and the windward harbours are in big trouble. Some of the fishermen can't even get to their pirogues! But the leeward anchorages remain somewhat/mostly/completely protected.

All seaweeds can be composted, some need added dry vegetative matter to prevent concentration of the odorific iodides and sulfates. Having a back-yard capacity chipper/grinder can yield the vegetative matter necessary to turn the ocean slime-weeds into something very useful for improving highly calcareous or silicatious topsoils. Shredding, grinding, and chipping garden and landscape debris, then mixing with seaweed detritus, makes fast work of smelly wastes, especially in warm temperatures.

Even in New England, which is the tailpipe of North America, we don't overly concern ourselves with " heavy metal contamination" of either seaweed, or any of our highly regarded sea-run fisheries from the open ocean. There are even now a growing number of commercial composting businesses turning a wide variety of wastes into both organic fertilizers and organic growing media ( aka potting soils).

Routine assay testing is an early warning of " heavy metal contamination", and no one in any part of New England wants anything to do with any matter coming from a well known part of Penobscot Bay that was highly polluted by Mallinkrodt Industries in the 1970's. The pollutant in that area is mercury in the river/sea bed. A large area to seaward from the Penobscot River south of Searsport is off limits to all harvesting of fish, lobster, clams, mussels, sea urchins, scallops, and seaweeds/kelp. The remediation of that travesty is so expensive, even the US Court system has been unable to recover the funds needed.

@Breeze - the marine industry in the Caribbean and several academic studies there and in the USA have failed to come close to a commercial composting method for Sargassum. Your post, particularly the first paragraph, indicates that they are all wrong.

I think that perhaps you might be equating what you know from New England to the Caribbean and if you do have a real solution to composting Sargassum that others don't you'll have a real money-maker and be a savior to the local fishing and tourism industries.

Was there any at Loblolly?

Lots of it

We watched the LIV golf tournament yesterday at Mayakoba (near Cancun). When they showed the beaches,
there was a tremendous amount of sargassum. They had nets set up to keep it off the beaches, but it was everywhere!

FYI - The final round of the LIV tournament is on the CW channel at 1 PM today eastern time.

This is an interesting article that shares this may become the new "normal".

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/07/great-atlantic-sargassum-belt-here-stay/593290/

Please tell me that White Bay (JVD) is usually safe from this crud??!! Will be spending a week there late April. Hoping for pristine conditions!