A Caribbean clean-up

COMMUNITIES and wildlife in the Caribbean are the first to benefit from world-first, sustainable technology that transforms Sargassum seaweed into eco-friendly materials, enabling a major blight to become blue gold.

- Maisha Frost

Developed by UK climate tech innovator Seafields Solutions, it is working in partnership with the islands and on wider open ocean initiatives to install pioneering systems that combine ecological restoration with commercial viability.

Products like soil improvers helping lands depleted by monoculture such as sugar and bioplastics could result from a feedstock pipeline based on the harvested seaweed.

Until recently however Sargassum has been all bad news with its surging growth amid warming seas causing nutrient blooms and thick underwater mats that impact livelihoods such as fishing and destroy sea life. On land it’s the tourist trade that suffers, plus the environment, as rotting Sargassum on beaches emits carbon.