In an article penned by Prof. Mona Webber (Director, Centre for Marine Sciences, The UWI Mona), she noted that scientists in Florida reported that the 2023 sargassum season is expected to be the worst on record. Accordingly,  the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA) has been issuing sargassum advisories in a daily newspaper.

Jamaica started experiencing damaging amounts of sargassum in 2018, and yearly inundation is now considered the biggest threat to the Caribbean. However, some researchers believe that the seaweed could also present an opportunity to develop new industries, as researchers at MIT have developed technologies to extract high-value substances from the algal biomass. At The UWI, studies on the composition of sargassum began in 2019 to explore its potential uses and to help fund sargassum control and management with Dr. Winklett Gallimore (Senior Lecturer) and Doleasha Davis (former student) both from the Department of Chemistry and colloborators from the University of York. The research found that sargassum contains useful plant nutrients, alginates, natural anti-bacterial compounds, and bioactive compounds that can act against certain cancer cells. The UWI  (Department of Life Sciences - Centre for Marine Sciences,  and Mona Geoinfromatics, Jamaica, CEREMES at Cave Hill Barbados) and international colloborators University of York, University of Ghana and the University of Southhampton has been working on a sargassum project for the last three years called SARTRAC, which aims to build capacity for transformational adaptation in the Caribbean and West Africa.

Sargassum can be used for various purposes, such as seed germination, adobe blocks production, and biogas production, but using unprocessed sargassum as fertilizer is dangerous due to its high levels of inorganic arsenic. 

Photo caption: Prof. Mona Webber (Director, Centre for Marine Sciences, The UWI Mona)

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