Where does the seaweed come from? Gulfweed or sea holly, as it s sometimes called, originates in the Sargasso Sea. Currents push it south, then east, either into the Caribbean Sea, the Gulf Stream or the Gulf of Mexico. The Gulf Stream carries it north, unless stronger east winds drive it onshore. The rest circles the Atlantic until it sinks and dies in the Sargasso Sea.
Is there anything good about seaweed?
In moderation, it has many environmental benefits, such as holding beach sand in place and providing food, fertilizer, hide-out habitat and nest-building materials for a vast array of wildlife, including birds, crabs, young turtles and dune plants. However, blooms have been increasing to problematic sizes over the past decade.
Over its broad distribution, the newly-formed Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt can be supported by nitrogen and phosphorus inputs from a variety of sources including discharges from the Congo, Amazon and Mississippi rivers, upwelling off the coast of Africa, vertical mixing, equatorial upwelling, atmospheric deposition from Saharan dust, and biomass burning of vegetation in central and South Africa,” Brian Lapointe, senior author on the paper and a research professor at FAU Harbor Branch, said in Monday s release.
Sargasso Sea
Sargassum is a constant presence in the Atlantic, so much so that a large swath of the North Atlantic is known as the Sargasso Sea. In past years, the weed has nagged fishermen from the Caribbean to Massachusetts, forcing them out of certain areas after they kept reeling in clumps of the stuff.
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Sargassum Seaweed-Derived Products, Technologies and Value Chains – The Focus of a CRFM Training Workshop on March 3rd, 2021 (The Bahamas one of four countries targeted for field work) By Staff1 / in Business, Highlight, In The News:, Nearby / on Tuesday, 02 Mar 2021 12:26 PM / Comments Off on Sargassum Seaweed-Derived Products, Technologies and Value Chains – The Focus of a CRFM Training Workshop on March 3rd, 2021 (The Bahamas one of four countries targeted for field work) / 1349
The Caribbean Regional Fisheries Mechanism (CRFM) and Plant & Food Research, a New Zealand Crown Research Institute, will host a virtual training workshop on Wednesday, 3 March 2021. The session which will be conducted with the assistance of Prof. Mona Webber of the Marine Science Centre, UWI, Mona Campus, Jamaica will focus on techniques for harvesting, handling, species identification and processing of Sargassum seaweed for initial evaluation.