Abstract

Pelagic sargassum was historically considered to be endemic to the North Atlantic. However, since 2011, massive influxes of pelagic sargassum from a new source region identified as the Tropical Atlantic NERR have been plaguing the Caribbean and West Africa. The beaching of pelagic sargassum and its subsequent decomposition have resulted in signifi-cant ecological and socio-economic consequences, requiring ongoing management of these sargassum influx events. To assist with these management efforts, several forecasting models have been developed to aid in the prediction of sargassum influxes. However, available forecasts are inherently unreliable, in part because they rely on the detection of sargassum from satellite images to seed advection models which then predict the passage of these inert pixels (Marsh et al. 2022). The addition of sargassum growth and mortality parameters to these models could potentially increase their accuracy. However, there is still generally very little known about the growth and mortality of pelagic sargassum, and no information for the new NERR sargassum population responsible for these influxes.

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