Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

The beau­ty of Caribbean beach­es is stained by sar­gas­sum, with­ered-look­ing al­gae that break with the waves and heaps up on the shore­line. For vil­lagers and vis­i­tors alike, beach­es be­come an eye-sore. Not on­ly are tourists turned off but busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties for res­i­dents in af­fect­ed ar­eas are re­duced.

In the vil­lage of Hope in To­ba­go, the near­by beach can be used on post­cards and tourist ad­ver­tise­ments. The beach stretch­es for miles lined with co­conut trees and sur­re­al scenery.

But like many oth­er beach­es on the is­land, sar­gas­sum is steal­ing the spot­light and hin­der­ing res­i­dents and tourists from tru­ly en­joy­ing its beau­ty.

Sar­gas­sum thrives in warm­ing wa­ters and ris­ing sea tem­per­a­tures cre­ate ide­al con­di­tions for it to grow. Ac­cord­ing to the Unit­ed Na­tions En­vi­ron­ment Pro­gramme, as sea tem­per­a­tures rise due to cli­mate change, sar­gas­sum has been spread­ing in larg­er quan­ti­ties and at a faster rate than ever be­fore.

Gen­nike May­ers moved from cen­tral Trinidad to To­ba­go five years ago.

“The best de­ci­sion of my life,” she says of her move.

May­ers set­tled down in the vil­lage of Hope where the sight, and smell, of sar­gas­sum were nev­er far away. How­ev­er, in­stead of scorn­ing it, May­ers em­braced the hid­den pow­er of this “nui­sance.”

Af­ter learn­ing about the nu­tri­tion­al and med­i­c­i­nal ben­e­fits of sar­gas­sum at a con­fer­ence in 2020, May­ers en­cour­aged her friend Don­na-Lisa Phillips, who makes beau­ty prod­ucts, to in­cor­po­rate sea­weed in­to her prod­ucts. It was ground­break­ing. Two years ago, they launched Spar­gas­sum - a line of skin­care prod­ucts made from sar­gas­sum.

“The idea re­al­ly came from the sci­ence,” May­ers ex­plained.

“Don­na-Lisa and I are not sci­en­tists but we’ve been fol­low­ing the sci­ence of sar­gas­sum in­clud­ing all the find­ings and re­search, and with Don­na-Lisa’s ex­per­tise in skin­care, to­geth­er we part­nered on this line.”

The In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB) liked the idea and sup­port­ed their start-up.

May­ers said: “Most peo­ple think of sar­gas­sum as a nui­sance. How­ev­er, we like to talk about turn­ing trash in­to trea­sure and we’re very proud to be be­hind a brand that turns waste in­to wealth and we’re do­ing that lo­cal­ly. There is a lot of talk now about sus­tain­abil­i­ty and the cir­cu­lar econ­o­my. This is the cir­cu­lar econ­o­my.”

They have now ex­pand­ed in­to An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, a Caribbean is­land that has been hav­ing ma­jor prob­lems with sar­gas­sum. How­ev­er, May­ers and her busi­ness part­ner have their eyes set on ex­pand­ing even fur­ther help­ing oth­er parts of the world turn their sar­gas­sum prob­lem in­to sweet-smelling skin­care prod­ucts.

“We want to con­quer the world be­cause our prod­uct is unique. We are a Caribbean so­lu­tion to a Caribbean prob­lem. There is not a sin­gle is­land in the Caribbean that is not fa­mil­iar with the prob­lem of sar­gas­sum. We want to be able to ex­port our so­lu­tion through­out the Caribbean re­gion,” she said.

The 48-year-old says her con­tri­bu­tion to help­ing the en­vi­ron­ment is mod­est at the mo­ment. Nonethe­less, her small start has the po­ten­tial to in­crease in mo­men­tum.

“At the op­er­a­tional size that we have right now we are pro­duc­ing at a very small scale so I can­not make any big boast about clean­ing up the en­tire beach of Sar­gas­sum, how­ev­er, that is our am­bi­tion. We want to make a big­ger foot­print in terms of how much sar­gas­sum we re­move from the sea and shore­line. Right now it is on a small scale but we are hap­py to do our part. As we say in the Caribbean, every drop fills the buck­et,” she ex­plained.

The re­sponse to their prod­ucts has been pos­i­tive.

“Peo­ple love the scent. They love the fact that some­thing they thought of be­ing smelly and itchy on your skin ac­tu­al­ly makes your skin soft and smooth and makes you smell good,” May­ers added.

Cus­tomers have al­so praised their pack­ag­ing, which May­ers says, is sus­tain­able keep­ing the use of plas­tic to a min­i­mum. The pack­ag­ing us­es glass bot­tles and is brand­ed To­ba­go which makes it a pop­u­lar sou­venir item for tourists vis­it­ing the is­land.

Al­though May­ers had no pre­vi­ous knowl­edge of what sar­gas­sum could be used for, she said she has al­ways been big on re­cy­cling.

She ex­plained: “It’s a way of life for me and this car­ries on with sar­gas­sum where we found in­for­ma­tion which says that sar­gas­sum sea­weed has use­ful nu­tri­ents that are good for the hu­man be­ing and so we turned it in­to some­thing use­ful and pleas­ant to use.”

In­creas­ing­ly, sar­gas­sum is be­ing used for dif­fer­ent pur­pos­es, in­clud­ing fer­til­iz­ers, an­i­mal feed, bio­ma­te­ri­als and bio­fu­els. Though it is a wor­ry­ing trend that in­creas­es with warm­ing wa­ters across the world, peo­ple like May­ers and Phillips are help­ing to put this sea­weed to good use. At the same time, in a small vil­lage on a small is­land, May­ers is help­ing kick­start a move­ment that ef­fi­cient­ly us­es sar­gas­sum.

In turn, it is help­ing a small com­mu­ni­ty with its sar­gas­sum prob­lem. Small steps to­wards a glob­al change.

This sto­ry was pub­lished with the sup­port of the Caribbean Cli­mate Jus­tice Jour­nal­ism Fel­low­ship, which is a joint ven­ture of Cli­mate Track­er and Open So­ci­ety Foun­da­tions.