Pat’s Wildways: Seaweed on my mind

I’m in Belize again, and I’ve got something new to focus on this visit: seaweed. My seaweed adventures began on my first day here when I strolled down Placencia’s main street and arrived hot and thirsty at The Shak at the dock, ready to sit and chill. As always, I perused the menu, and “ seaweed shakes” jumped out at me. What was delivered to me was a thick milkshake, but with carrageenan from red seaweed used to thicken it. It turned out to be as tasty as any other milkshake, depending on the rest of the ingredients, but with fewer calories and more health benefits, or so they say.

It turns out that southern Belize is the epicenter of a growing sustainable enterprise here: farming seaweed. The Belize seaweed farms are offshore near various islands some 15 or more miles from my vantage point in Placencia. Although I didn’t see the farms, I did spend a day walking around Placencia trying to find where seaweed is processed and ended up locating the office of the Belize Women’s Seaweed Farmers Association. “How did you find us?” The women there asked me. I had asked people where to find seaweed, and one tip led to another and another — total word of mouth. A fun treasure hunt!

I have learned that the budding new seaweed farming operations are still in governmental limbo regarding rules for getting leases of the growing area, and production and selling of the product. In fact, the packages of seaweed I purchased were a year old. But I felt good supporting the women who are trying to grow this industry. And I have packages of seaweed to bring home, where I will gift some to friends with instructions to soak and boil it and strain out the seaweed to leave behind the seaweed gel, which thickens shakes, and enhances shampoos and other cosmetics. I can’t wait to see how it turns out at home and how people use it.

So I thought this was it for my seaweed encounters but then the sargassum weed drifted to the beach in large rafts, making the water inaccessible to swim in without first walking over and then wading through the noxious stuff that stings the skin due to the jellyfish nematocysts dislodged from their hosts when disturbed. This is a seasonal problem in the Caribbean, and Florida is well within its range too — watch out.

Sargassum weed is a natural component of the Atlantic Ocean, and, in times past it floated harmlessly out at sea, providing a haven for young sea turtles and other marine species. But in recent years, increasing fertilizers entering the sea from the Mississippi and Amazon Rivers and the warming water temperatures have led to a bloom of this plant, causing massive rafts of it to form, and increased storms roll much of it onto the shores. The economic impact of the threat to coastal tourism in Mexico, Belize and other Caribbean shores is massive. Who wants to visit a beach when you can’t enter the water?

Here in Belize and Mexico when sargassum washes up, the goal is to quickly remove it from the water before it rots and stinks and causes even more distress to people nearby. Teams of bare-chested men with shovels and picks toss it up on the beach, and specialized tractors remove the piles loaded onto the beach.

And what do they do with it? It turns out that sargassum seaweed contains high levels of arsenic and cannot be safely used as fertilizer for agricultural crops and certainly not to feed livestock. Here in Belize, they use dried sargassum to fill potholes and other road construction projects.

This information has now led me to question possible levels of arsenic in farmed red seaweed. But don't worry, studies of edible seaweed have found far less arsenic than sargassum weed, well below any concerning levels. Phew, another fear abated!

There’s always something!

Pat Foster-Turley, Ph.D., is a zoologist on Amelia Island. She welcomes your nature questions and observations. patandbucko@yahoo.com