Abstract

Over the past decade unprecedented blooming of pelagic sargassum has occurred across the Equatorial Atlantic from West Africa to the Caribbean. Mass accumulation and decomposition of stranded sargassum has resulted in a plethora of management challenges for fisheries, tourism, nearshore coastal eco-systems, public health and the socioeconomic welfare of coastal communities (Chávez et al. 2020). In-water harvesting has been suggested as a desirable management solution to prevent shoreline inundation. However, pelagic sargassum functions as an important floating ecosystem to a diverse assemblage of fauna (Martin et al. 2021). Thus, destruction of the associated biodiversity is a concern and has not been adequately examined to assess the potential impacts of in-water harvesting (Oxenford et al. 2021). This needs to be assessed in a practical and systematic way, but to date, methods across the Tropical Atlantic have been ad hoc and highly variable with no established sampling protocol (Alleyne 2022).

PDF Preview