TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums British Virgin Islands sagassum on the beach

He all got a big question about seaweed in the Caribbean islands. Might not seem the right place to ask except that THE prefesser might be listening.

Was looking at Barbados and found that they have had bad seaweed problems since Mar 2014. Gets real bad sometimes. Further surfing showed that many of the islands from Grenada to St Matin have suffered. One article by a scientist said it was from near the Amazon and has been going on since about 2010. She suggested it might be semi-permanent, bad deal.

Has there been any increase of seaweed on the beaches in the BVI? Also Glenn if you got any insight into the issue we'll all learn something new.

Jim

Aparently very little comes from the Sargasso Sea. The latest theory is that it is caused by the nutrient rich polution flowing out of the Orinoco and Amazon rivers. I can't see how Orinoco sargassum could reach the BVI but the Amazon feeds the North Brazillian Current and the North Equitorial Counter Current where it has plenty of time to grow and mature as it crosses the Atlantic. Some is deposited on west African beaches and the rest recirculates back in the North Equitorial Current. A certain fraction stays in The North Eqitorial Current and is carried north to the Leewards and the BVI but the majority transfers back into the North Brazillian Current which flows through the Windwards so the problem is much worse down there.

While there last week, the northern Anegada beaches were covered with it. Anegada Beach Club had a guy with a 33 gallon trash can raking it up as fast as he could, and we were able to get to the water without treading through it. However, Lobolly was a different story. It was 1-2' tall and 3-4' thick through much of the area.

Areas on Tortola where the water was calm and it congregated had a pretty strong smell.

On the water, sailing through it was not a problem and we didn't see that much of it.