Sargassum’s Second Summer: Q3 2015 and Jamaica’s Growing Realisation That the Seaweed Problem Was Not Going Away

Briefing

• Sargassum returned to Jamaica’s north and south coast beaches in significant volumes in summer 2015.
• The first published economic impact studies estimated sargassum was costing Caribbean tourism hundreds of millions of dollars annually.
• Resort operators had developed beach raking protocols; the cost of raking was now a budget line item.
• Scientists confirmed the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt was a permanent new feature of Atlantic oceanography.
• The government began discussions with regional partners on a coordinated Caribbean response.

The summer of 2014 had been the first year Jamaica experienced the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt at full force. The brown seaweed arrived in quantities that overwhelmed the raking capacity of beach management teams, accumulated at the waterline in mats several metres deep, released hydrogen sulphide gas that made some beaches temporarily uninhabitable, and generated the kind of guest experience feedback that tourism operators described as the worst they had seen in careers that spanned multiple decades.

The hope, in the winter of 2014 and early 2015, was that the 2014 event had been exceptional — a confluence of warm Atlantic waters, changing wind patterns, and the growth of the nutrient-enriched offshore sargassum mass that might not recur at the same intensity. The summer of 2015 ended that hope. The sargassum returned. It was somewhat less severe than the peak 2014 inundation at some sites, but it was present, persistent, and, by this point, clearly established as a recurring seasonal feature rather than a one-time event.

The Economic Reckoning

The first formal economic impact studies of sargassum on Caribbean tourism were published in 2015, and their conclusions were significant. Beach tourism in the Caribbean generated tens of billions of dollars annually; the sargassum inundation was affecting the quality and availability of the beach product that underpinned that economy. The studies estimated Caribbean-wide economic losses running into hundreds of millions of dollars annually at peak inundation — a figure that translated into real revenue declines at affected properties, reduced occupancy during peak inundation events, and the cost of beach management operations that had not previously been required.

For Jamaica specifically, the economic impact was materialising in property-level decisions: some resort operators were investing in sargassum harvesting equipment, others were negotiating commercial arrangements with communities to provide additional manual raking labour, and all were trying to manage the reputational consequences of guest experience data that showed beach quality scores declining in the quarters when sargassum was heaviest.

The Science of a Permanent Belt

Oceanographers studying the Atlantic sargassum phenomenon confirmed in 2015 that what they were observing was not cyclical or temporary. The Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt, which had grown dramatically since its first appearance in satellite data around 2011, had established itself as a permanent feature of Atlantic ocean circulation, sustained by the nutrient enrichment of Atlantic and Caribbean waters from river runoff — principally the Amazon and Congo rivers, whose nitrogen and phosphorus loads had increased with agricultural intensification on their catchments. Short of addressing those nutrient inputs at their source, or implementing large-scale mechanical harvesting at a cost and scale far beyond what Caribbean governments had considered, the sargassum was not going away. Jamaica’s coast, and every coast that received Caribbean water, was managing the long-term consequences of a global agricultural system that had been discharging into the ocean for decades.

Related: Property Market Analysis | Latest Jamaica News

Follow Jamaica Homes on Youtube @jamaicahomes and Instagram @jamaica_homes and on Facebook @jamaicahomes Send us a message or email us at onlinefeedback@jamaica-homes.com or editor@jamaica-homes.com