Sargassum challenges, responses, and collaboration in the Caribbean

Pelagic Sargassum is a free-floating brown seaweed that blossoms naturally in the warm waters of the Sargasso Sea of the Northern Atlantic Ocean. The unprecedented recent influx of Sargassum seaweed on coastal shores in West Africa and the Caribbean Sea is being attributed to factors that include warming of the ocean due to global climate change, discharge of macronutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus forms) from agricultural run-off and wastewater originating from point sources and from major river basins such as the Congo and Amazon Rivers, and the deposition of iron and nutrient-rich Saharan dust on the ocean.

The fourth webinar in this series will take place on Monday, 30 November 2020 with focus on Caribbean, where by 2018, the mats had grown into the largest macroalgae bloom in recorded history, an 8,850 km long mass extending from the central Atlantic and Caribbean Sea to West Africa and the Gulf of Mexico. Chunks of Sargassum, circulated by ocean currents, now regularly wash ashore in the Caribbean, where they rot on the beaches, giving off a strong, sulfurous stench.  This webinar will contribute to the ‘White paper’ developed in 2019 which serves as a living document and present the most significant and recent research data on the regional situation across the Wider Caribbean Region.

The event will take place on Monday, 30 November 2020; 1700-1900 hours; East African time (UTC+3).

Watch the event online.