Abstract

Unprecedented massive landings of Sargassum are regularly registered since 2011 along the shorelines of a huge area encompassing French Guyana, the Antilles and Caribbean Sea. The phenomenon affects widely the West Indies (Guadeloupe, Martinique, Barbados ...), Dominican Republic, Mexico, etc. and many sightings have been reported. Algae arrive from the open sea as large rafts (tenths of km) after drifting over long distances in the Central Atlantic NERR, and accumulating in consolidation areas in the Brazil retroflexion current and probably the Gulf of Guinea. Compared to previous years, 2018 is far the worst year in terms of Sargassum landings on Caribbean islands shorelines. Washing-ashore has tremendous negative impacts on local populations, coastal marine ecosystems and the economy sector, especially tourism and fisheries that are severely affected. CLS is developing applications for the marine domain using satellite technologies since 1986: wildlife tracking with the Argos system, managing marine resources and fisheries, detecting oil spill, identifying polluters for the maritime surveil-lance, traffic monitoring, illegal fishing, earth observations for environmental monitoring… CLS started exploring remote sensing for the monitoring of floating Sargassum algae in the Caribbean Islands in 2015. NBE has been providing Sargassum forecast bulletins to the local French environmental office (DEAL) in Guadeloupe since 2013. In 2018, the consortium CLS-NBE has been awarded a project with the ESA (European Space Agency) to implement an innovative service based on Earth Observation (EO) data to monitor floating Sargassum algae in the Caribbe-an area.

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