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It's coming. Floating across the ocean's surface in brown, island-sized masses, observers have likened the Sargassum Sea to a horror story "blob." Although seaweed itself might not be so scary, a growing mass of over 8.7 million tons can become an economic and environmental disaster.
Come summer, this seaweed blob could be hitting Florida's beaches. While experts cannot predict precisely how much, some amount of sargassum shows up to some degree every year. This year, they expect tonnage to surpass last year's 22-million-ton record.
But sargassum is just one more item in a list of "Don't Look Up" environmental disasters we face by burying. This is why we never get around to solving big environmental problems — putting them off for tomorrow never gets anything done. Instead, we need entrepreneurs, engineers, investors, and inventors to look for circular approaches that turn problems into revenue and drive real change.
Danger: Sargassum
Sargassum blooms typically provide food and shelter for migratory sea life, but recently, quantities have risen dramatically. In excess, the biomass does more harm than good: blocking light from getting below the ocean's surface, eating up dissolved oxygen, choking off life from canals and mangroves, and affecting other marine organisms and commercially important fish, like tuna and marlin. Comparing samples from the 1980s to those collected since 2010, researchers have seen the plant's chemical makeup transform from a "vibrant living organism" to a "toxic dead zone."
Once on shore, it gets even worse. Heaping piles cover the sand several feet deep. It decomposes and releases methane gas, one of the largest contributors to global warming. Tiny sea creatures living inside can cause beach-goers skin rashes or blisters. Turtle hatchlings sheltering in the mass can't find their way back to the sea.
Local communities may suffer adverse health effects from the increase in accumulated fecal bacteria, but they definitely suffer economically because of the smell. The rotting sargassum releases hydrogen sulfide, giving off an odor akin to rotten eggs. Depending on the wind, people might smell the decay several blocks from the shore. Palm Beach town councilmember Bobbie Lindsay described the smell as toxic, making the beach "unusable" for much of last summer.
Chuanmin Hu, oceanography professor and head of the Optical Oceanography lab at the University of South Florida, says real estate investors and airlines seek his advice when buying properties and scheduling flights to avoid land where sargassum accumulates and reduce flights to those areas during tourist season. Sargassum onshore is particularly harmful, not only in places like Miami but also in small Caribbean countries that are heavily reliant on tourism and have fewer resources to handle it.
Doing Too Little, Too Late
Researchers believe higher nitrogen and phosphorus levels fuel these record-breaking sargassum blooms, calling this inundation a "new normal" that we'll have to adapt to. Some are burying it. Others are throwing it in forests or landfills. But among those who know the massive blob of sargassum is coming, few know exactly how to handle it.
In the Dominican Republic, SOS Carbon has introduced cost-efficient technology adaptable to fishing boats of all sizes, allowing for sargassum collection closer to the shores and bringing employment opportunities to problem areas. However, their disposal method only sinks sargassum deeper into the ocean, potentially disrupting habitats and causing further problems.
In 2019, the Mexican Navy built new ships to reel in as much sargassum as possible. Floating barriers from Mexico's Tulum National Park have provided some relief from the seaweed reaching their shores, and areas in the Florida Keys already use or are considering similar methods. Unfortunately, these solutions cost millions only to address the effects of the problem, not the cause.
When dealing with smaller quantities than hitting shores today, sargassum removal from beaches costs Texas $2.9 million annually. In recent reports, Miami-Dade County was spending an annual $45 million. A Caribbean-wide clean-up in 2018 cost $120 million, not including the economic loss to the area, local businesses, and communities. Instead of spending millions to move the problem elsewhere, they should reallocate funds to a long-term solution.
Motivate Change With a Circular Approach
The most successful solutions turn problems into profits. A circular approach — processing sargassum and feeding it back into the system — is the fastest and most effective way of solving issues that otherwise seem too big to handle. We may not be able to reverse the elevated nutrient content of the ocean that causes massive amounts of sargassum, but we can turn that waste into something useful.
The plant isn't suitable for cooking because of potentially toxic levels of heavy metals, like arsenic and cadmium, but studies have shown sargassum to be a successful fertilizer after proper composting. Miami-Dade County collects its sargassum and passes it on to local vendors who compost and turn it into commercial fertilizer. In Mexico, Omar Vasquez takes a different circular approach: Mixing the sargassum waste with clay and compost, he presses it into bricks to build homes.
Although few companies can complete this process fast enough to match the seaweed's rapid growth, emerging technologies offer promising hope. ADAR Technologies (disclosure: ADAR is a client of my company, GSDFuel, and I am also ADAR's interim CEO) dries, pulverizes, and sanitizes the seaweed to create high-protein, nutrient-rich powder in a millisecond. The carbon-neutral technology uses no heat or fossil fuels and can be deployed in a stationary or mobile unit. The use cases for this product range from animal feed and fertilizer to the creation of renewable electricity and green hydrogen. This is a green circular approach at the scale that could potentially solve — not bury — the sargassum problem.
Sargassum is one of many environmental problems that need solving, and if we look hard enough, we can find a circular approach to them all. Emissions, invasive species, rising water levels — by figuring out ways to turn those problems into products, innovative thinkers can have an impact. Financially incentivize the mitigation of deadly threats to the environment, and more people will finally do something to save it.