Bar­ba­dos will be­come the first Caribbean coun­try to ben­e­fit from deep sea re­search that could bring so­lu­tions to Sar­gas­sum in­un­da­tion chal­lenges by sink­ing the sea­weed to the bot­tom of the ocean floor.

The is­land is brac­ing for an­oth­er in­flux of Sar­gas­sum from as ear­ly as Jan­u­ary 1, next year and heavy in­flux­es from Feb­ru­ary.

Sci­en­tists from the Unit­ed King­dom’s Na­tion­al Oceanog­ra­phy Cen­tre (NOC), in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Seafields In­te­grat­ed En­vi­ron­ment So­lu­tions and the Cave Hill cam­pus of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), have em­barked on a project to un­der­stand the po­ten­tial ef­fects of us­ing sea­weed to store car­bon diox­ide from the at­mos­phere.

The project is co-fund­ed by the UK For­eign Com­mon­wealth and De­vel­op­ment Of­fice, and is val­ued at GBP100,000 (One GBP=US$1.26 cents).

Speak­ing dur­ing a press con­fer­ence on­board the re­search ves­sel, the RSS James Cook, Di­rec­tor of the Coastal Zone Man­age­ment Unit (CZ­MU), Dr. Leo Brew­ster, de­scribed the work as be­ing “trans­for­ma­tive for the is­land.

“This project, in its own self, charts a new way for­ward glob­al­ly, and it sets Bar­ba­dos as be­ing an is­land state that can ac­tu­al­ly look at us­ing its strate­gic lo­ca­tion with­in the ocean as a pro­to­type test­ing cen­tre for dif­fer­ent av­enues of ma­rine re­search. This is some­thing that has not been done be­fore in Bar­ba­dos.”

He not­ed that the CZ­MU and the re­search sec­tion of the Ma­rine Spa­tial Plan­ning teams worked over the last year to find base­line da­ta, back­ground in­for­ma­tion, and any­thing that could speak to the is­land’s ocean, es­pe­cial­ly in the deep­er wa­ters.

Dr. Brew­ster said that the project en­hanced that re­search and pre­sent­ed an op­por­tu­ni­ty for Bar­ba­di­ans to learn more about deep sea re­search. He al­so urged rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the UWI to form the nec­es­sary link­ages to ex­plore sim­i­lar av­enues in the fu­ture.

“The work that has been done by the James Cook re­search ves­sel has been some­thing that will open our eyes to op­por­tu­ni­ties with­in the blue econ­o­my struc­ture. It will open av­enues for us as to how we can de­vel­op our ma­rine spa­tial plan….

“The sig­nif­i­cance of that is that new in­for­ma­tion can help guide us to bet­ter ap­pre­ci­ate the re­sources that we have, learn more about what is on the ocean floor. That has sig­nif­i­cance for us,” Dr. Brew­ster said.

Act­ing Min­is­ter of the En­vi­ron­ment and Na­tion­al Beau­ti­fi­ca­tion, Green and Blue Econ­o­my, Corey Lane, al­so com­mend­ed work be­ing done un­der the project, de­scrib­ing it as be­ing “ex­treme­ly im­por­tant”.

“It is how do we treat to the Sar­gas­sum; how do we treat to re­mov­ing Co2. It is all about com­pact­ing it, test­ing it, and putting it in­to ar­eas of the ocean that have nev­er been ex­plored be­fore. This is ex­treme­ly sci­en­tif­ic and is pi­o­neer­ing work,” he said, adding that it was a ma­jor move for Bar­ba­dos and the Caribbean, with the po­ten­tial of hav­ing a glob­al reach, if suc­cess­ful.

“We will analyse the find­ings which will dic­tate if we can scale it up, the re­sults and tech­nol­o­gy, if that can be ex­port­ed to the world. I do be­lieve that some find­ings and some things we gath­er from this type of project could be of val­ue to us fi­nan­cial­ly,” he said.

NOC prin­ci­pal ma­rine geo­sci­en­tist and project lead, Dr. Christo­pher Pearce, ex­plained that work was done on two sites along the is­land’s coast­line. Those are the west and south-east coasts. The work was con­duct­ed on the two sites of 1,000 me­tres and 4,000 me­tres wa­ter depth with­in the Ex­clu­sive Eco­nom­ic Zone.

“Car­bon diox­ide is the green­house gas that is help­ing to dri­ve cli­mate change. So, if we could bury the sea­weed at the bot­tom of the ocean, it could po­ten­tial­ly lock away some of the car­bon diox­ide for hun­dreds and thou­sands of years.”

He said dur­ing those ini­tial in­ves­ti­ga­tions, the team al­so took sed­i­ment and wa­ter sam­ples and ex­am­ined some of the an­i­mals found with­in and will re­turn to sink Sar­gas­sum be­tween Feb­ru­ary and April 2024.

He said it will be left for a 12-month pe­ri­od be­fore the re­search ves­sel re­turns to con­duct fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tions as to how the bales have changed.

Pearce said that un­der the three-year project, the sea­weed would be de­posit­ed to the bot­tom of the ocean in a con­trolled man­ner.

“Coun­tries are look­ing for ways to dis­pose of the Sar­gas­sum that is wash­ing up on shore. In the Caribbean, there is lim­it­ed land mass, where it can be prob­lem­at­ic to dis­pose of it on the land it­self.

“Some coun­tries are al­ready look­ing to dis­pose of it at sea, but we have not been able to get down to the bot­tom of the ocean to see what ef­fects the sea­weed has when it reach­es the sea floor, or does it even reach the sea floor.”

Pearce said there was in­creas­ing in­ter­est in grow­ing or har­vest­ing Sar­gas­sum and oth­er sea­weeds and in­ten­tion­al­ly tak­ing them down to the bot­tom of the ocean to lock away car­bon diox­ide.

“Car­bon diox­ide is the green­house gas that is help­ing to dri­ve cli­mate change. So, if we could bury the sea­weed at the bot­tom of the ocean, it could po­ten­tial­ly lock away some of the car­bon diox­ide for hun­dreds and thou­sands of years.

“It is po­ten­tial­ly a win-win sce­nario deal­ing with Sar­gas­sum in­un­da­tion and help­ing to tack­le cli­mate change. But, be­fore we can take this for­ward we have to un­der­stand what the ef­fects are on the deep sea com­mu­ni­ties and does it ac­tu­al­ly stay down there. The dif­fi­cul­ty in do­ing this work is get­ting to the bot­tom of the ocean,” he added.

British High Com­mis­sion­er to Bar­ba­dos and the East­ern Caribbean, Scott Fursse­donn-Wood, al­so high­light­ed the chal­lenges Caribbean coun­tries faced with Sar­gas­sum, and not­ed that the UK was de­light­ed to co-fund the re­search to as­sist its Caribbean part­ners in find­ing so­lu­tions to the re­gion­al Sar­gas­sum in­un­da­tions.

BRIDGETOWN, Bar­ba­dos, Dec 20, CMC