Circular EconomyNovember 7, 2023 Seaweed Siege: Unravelling Sargassum’s Effect on Coastal Livelihoods in the Dominican Republic
Image © Combine Harvester | Coastal communities collect and remove sargassum from the beaches in Punta Cana. Retrieved: only.one
Sargassum overblooms have threatened fishing and tourism industries, with cascading effects on local communities. But these communities are resilient, and many are coming together to explore technological solutions to the crisis. Andrés Bisonó León, executive president of Sargassum Ocean Sequestration of Carbon (SOS Carbon), believes that the excessive influx of sargassum can be an opportunity to create new jobs and markets for the use of sargassum as raw material. The company’s namesake product is the SOS system — a boat-mounted device that pumps the surface seaweed to 200 meters below the surface, a depth beyond which the ocean pressure is expected to continue sinking it to a depth of 1 km or more. As Andrés describes, the benefits are twofold: first, this method precludes the high-cost current necessity of bringing the sargassum inland to manage, and second, it allows Dominicans to sequester carbon deep in the ocean. “We can use the oceans as a carbon storage and carbon removal place.”
Patent pending, this innovation could partly counter the environmental impact of sargassum overgrowth. But financing remains an issue. As Andrés notes, “We’re still working on launching this technology at an operational level — that’s an area where funding would be very handy because we can propel […] or advance the scientific knowledge around it, to really just launch it or implement it at that operational scale.”
SOS aims to prioritize sustainable, community-centered practices in their approach. Andrés emphasizes that whether they are designing or deploying systems and technologies, their goal is to maximize efficiency and uptake, and minimize the use of new equipment, incorporating local materials that communities already have on hand. “We try to do the opposite of just saying hey, you cannot go fish. We instead offer them a platform of employment and help in this transition.”
Using artisanal vessels to harvest sargassum with retrofitted hardware, SOS turns local boats into high-capacity harvesters. In doing so, they not only take advantage of existing infrastructure, but also incorporate the local expertise of already established industries and communities into their designs and planning.
Beyond the Dominican Republic, a bevy of other solutions to the sargassum crisis are under development with potential for widespread application. In Puerto Morelos, Mexico, Omar Vázquez Sánchez stirs sargassum into bricks to build houses for those in need. Traditional building materials like concrete and clay bricks pose a significant environmental footprint due to their high-pollution production processes — sargassum, renewable and biodegradable, may well prove a more sustainable construction material. With its natural insulating properties, sargassum-brick buildings could be more energy-efficient and cost-effective than those built with conventional materials, able to be quickly scaled in regions like the Dominican Republic where the seaweed is abundant.
In Jamaica, entrepreneur Daveian Morrison is constructing a processing facility to convert seaweed into charcoal as a substitute for firewood. His recipe for animal feed made from the protein-rich algae proved a hit at a local goat farm, but needs more testing to further evaluate its scalability.
And in Barbados, a team from the University of the West Indies integrates sargassum with waste from a rum distillery to produce methane to power transportation across the island. Subject to additional research and funding, this biofuel holds the promising potential to replace fossil fuels that currently power the majority of Caribbean vehicles.
