Sto­ry by SHAS­TRI BOODAN

There are moves to be­gin ex­plor­ing and re­search­ing whether Sar­gas­sum can be used safe­ly as fer­tilis­er in the agri­cul­ture sec­tor, as beach­es around To­ba­go con­tin­ue to be plagued by the sea­weed.

To­ba­go's Sar­gas­sum Re­sponse Com­mit­tee has de­vel­oped a project, which will in­volve ex­ten­sive re­search in­to the safe­ty of Sar­gas­sum for agri­cul­ture use.

Ac­cord­ing to Howard Mario Robin—a Cli­mate Change Spe­cial­ist with the Di­vi­sion of In­fra­struc­ture, Quar­ries and the En­vi­ron­ment in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA)—Sar­gas­sum has the abil­i­ty to ab­sorb tox­ins and heavy met­als.

In an in­ter­view on To­ba­go's Chan­nel 5, Robin ex­plained that de­pend­ing on where the Sar­gas­sum pass­es, it can ex­tract tox­ins from that area and store it.

He con­firmed that tests would be done on Sar­gas­sum where it is col­lect­ed, to de­ter­mine its tox­i­c­i­ty lev­els.  Fol­low­ing test­ing, the Sar­gas­sum Re­sponse Com­mit­tee would then ad­vise where Sar­gas­sum may be col­lect­ed to be used as a fer­til­iz­er.

Not­ing that Sar­gas­sum is home to many small fish and crabs, the Cli­mate Change Spe­cial­ist al­so ad­vised against con­sum­ing fish caught in it, giv­en the re­al­i­ty that the sea­weed ab­sorbs tox­ins and heavy met­als from ar­eas it tra­vers­es, which could con­t­a­m­i­nate the seafood.

Howard Mario Robin ob­served that the pres­ence of Sar­gas­sum is the new nor­mal in the Caribbean re­gion and To­ba­go.

He ad­vised per­sons to avoid beach­es with a heavy build-up of Sar­gas­sum, since it gives out gas­es as sul­phur diox­ide and am­mo­nia when de­cay­ing, which can cause res­pi­ra­to­ry prob­lems and vi­sion prob­lems.

Robin al­so warned against per­sons ven­tur­ing out in­to the sea­weed since it is un­cer­tain what species of fish and oth­er sea life may be trapped with­in, which could be harm­ful to hu­mans. Ac­cord­ing to the Cli­mate Change Spe­cial­ist, the high­ly tox­ic Por­tuguese Man of War Jel­ly­fish is one such species that could be trapped in a Sar­gas­sum web.

Howard Mario Robin al­so re­ports that part of the re­search project in­cludes the set­ting up of air qual­i­ty sta­tions in ar­eas with a heavy Sar­gas­sum build up, as well as through­out To­ba­go. He said the find­ings from the mon­i­tors would be used to ad­vise the pub­lic and alert health au­thor­i­ties.