Record sargassum growth in the Atlantic Ocean this year has swamped the Virgin Islands — straining filtration systems, blackening jewellery and other metals, and inundating homes, beaches and ports with noxious odours.
Affected residents, meanwhile, have complained with growing frustration that the government response to the 14-year-old problem has been too little, too late.
“It’s an ongoing issue, and this year is one of the worst years that we’ve seen,” Virgin Gorda resident Sharon Flax-Brutus told the Beacon Tuesday. “I know that some of us have been advocating from the beginning of the year and sending information to government advising them that the forecast was showing that there’d be more sargassum than normal.”
That forecast was correct.
A record of about 37.5 million metric tonnes of the brown seaweed was recorded this year across the Atlantic Basin in May, according to scientists who use satellite data to track the annual phenomenon at the University of South Florida.
The previous record, set in June 2022, was about 24 million metric tonnes.
In the Virgin Islands
By early spring, VI residents were complaining vocally about the seaweed build-up, which has plagued the Caribbean on a nearly annual basis since 2011.
“It’s been piling up for months now,” Ms. Flax-Brutus said this week, adding that she has complained to government officials
about the problem since at least 2019. Ms. Flax-Brutus acknowledged that sargassum is a regional problem, but she said the territory has a history of waiting too long to respond to such issues.
“The challenge that I have in the BVI is that we don’t seem to consider it a priority to do a whole lot about it in a very proactive way,” she said. “We wait until it’s already piled up on the shore creating a stench, and then we talk about not having enough money in the budget to be able to deal with it.”
Clean-up efforts
As complaints mounted this year, the Ministry of Environment, Natural Resources and Climate Change launched clean-up efforts at some of the worst-affected areas, including Long Bay and Trellis Bay on Beef Island; Handsome Bay on Vigin Gorda; and the Road Town ferry terminal on Tortola, according to a government press release issued Aug. 1.
“Clean-up in other areas will be triggered on a case-by-case basis as limited resources allow and based on accessibility of affected areas, with priority given to high-use recreational beaches, ports and areas with critical public infrastructure such as desalination plants,” stated the ENRCC Ministry, which is responsible for heading government’s sargassum response.
Officials, the ministry noted, were also considering acquiring “specialised equipment for in-water containment and removal” of the seaweed in preparation for possible influxes next year.
The statement added that the response was being guided by the 2023 Virgin Islands Sargassum Adaptive Management Strategy.
Influx continues
But in the weeks after the ministry’s Aug. 1 announcement, sargassum continued to inundate shorelines across the territory.
Ms. Flax-Brutus said the fumes have caused metal to turn black in her home in the Windy Hill area of The Valley.
“I took my silver jewellery in to clean a couple weeks ago,” she said. “And in four days they had turned black again.”
Virgin Gorda Yacht Harbour General Manager Alejandro Chometowski told the Beacon yesterday that some areas of the sister island have been a “nightmare.”
“Handsome Bay is the most critical, as it is where the city water [plant] is,” he said in a WhatsApp message. “Also, at South End in [Virgin Gorda] it has been terrible too.”
The yacht harbour, however, has been spared the worst of the influx because of its location in Spanish Town.
“We are located on the leeward side of the island,” he said. “We have been lucky and well protected from the sargassum.”
Scrub Island, Trellis Bay
Across the Sir Francis Drake Channel, Scrub Island Resort, Spa and Marina General Manager Sandra Grisham told the Beacon that her staff has spent long hours in the early mornings clearing away sargassum — even though the property is relatively protected from the seaweed.
“We have to put in at least three times more hours to clean the beaches, but we are able to maintain it, fortunately for us,” Ms. Grisham said.
She added that her guests are also affected by the sargassum build-up in nearby Trellis Bay.
“What happens at Trellis Bay is our first impression for our guests,” she said. “So we appreciate and applaud and try and help in any way we can — to mitigate it and to get that sargassum weed out of Trellis Bay.”
That work, she said, has been ongoing in recent months.
“We do see the efforts that are going on,” the manager said. “We see the trucks come; we see the equipment come in to remove it. And it’s vital that happens from our seat.”
Smelly tap water on VG
In recent weeks, Virgin Gorda residents also took to social media to complain about foul-smelling tap water — a phenomenon caused in the past by sargassum-tainted water sucked into the intake pipe of the sister island’s main desalination plant in Handsome Bay.
In apparent response to such complaints, the Environmental Health Division warned residents last Thursday to avoid drinking tap water with “an unfamiliar smell, taste or colour.”
“When large amounts of sargassum decompose, they release substances that may affect the taste and smell of pipe-borne water, damage water pipes and treatment plants, and increase the risk of bacterial growth in the water supply,” the agency stated.
Ms. Flax-Brutus was not impressed with the warning.
“For me, this is not even ‘a little too late,’” she said. “It’s a lot too late. In my estimation, it’s not that they didn’t know that Virgin Gorda was having a challenge with the quality of the water, because we’d said this to them for quite a while.”
Weeks ago, she added, she turned off the intake pipes that pump public water into the cisterns at the Mahoe Bay Villas, which she manages.
Vulnerable area
Plans to address the sister island’s water problem are included in the territory’s 2023 sargassum management strategy, which was drafted as part of a project funded by about $290,000 from the United Kingdom government’s Darwin Plus programme that also created strategies for Montserrat and Anguilla.
The 2023 strategy identifies Handsome Bay as one of the three most sargassum-vulnerable areas in the VI — the other two being Trellis Bay on Beef Island and Road Town Harbour on Tortola — and it explicitly warns of the risks associated with the Virgin Gorda desalination plant.
The strategy also recommends several specific measures that could help mitigate those risks: monitoring vulnerable areas with cameras; funding and creating an early-warning system; using booms and other equipment to collect sargassum before it reaches the shore; setting up systems for safely removing the seaweed from the shore in a timely manner; conducting hazard mapping at sensitive areas; and others.
But many of these measures were left undone even as sargassum swamped the waters adjacent to the desalination plant once again this year.
Attempts to interview officials at the ENRCC Ministry were not successful, but Health and Social Development Minister Vincent Wheatley — who represents Virgin Gorda and Anegada in the House of Assembly — told the Beacon on Monday that various response efforts remain under consideration.
The government, for instance, is still considering a system of booms in Handsome Bay to help redirect the sargassum away from the water plant’s intake pipe, according to the minister.
“The booms might be very similar to a swim buoy,” said Mr. Wheatley, who lives above Handsome Bay and said he has been personally affected by the sargassum problem. “And we could channel sargassum onto a specific point on the beach, where a conveyor belt should be installed — so as it comes in, it can be removed immediately.”
Once that sargassum has been trucked onto land, Mr. Wheatley explained, it can be deposited at the island’s dump, where he said it dries out and “quickly” disintegrates.
According to Ms. Grisham, booms have been used successfully on Great Camanoe.
“Great Camanoe, where I live, we put sargassum booms in, and it kept it at bay,” she said. “But we had [Hurricane Erin] come by, so we pulled the booms out and here comes the sargassum. Well, what are we to do?”
Intake pipe
Michael Matthew, the Handsome Bay water plant’s general manager, previously suggested other mitigation measures during a 2023 public meeting called after a previous outcry over smelly tap water on the sister island that year.
Mr. Matthew recommended extending the plant’s intake pipe by 800 feet and reorienting its grille to face away from the direction the sargassum was flowing.
On Monday, Mr. Wheatley echoed Mr. Matthew’s 2023 advice, adding that the current grille provides insufficient filtration.
“The grate only filters out the big pieces of sargassum,” the minister told the Beacon. “What’s happening now is sargassum has dissolved in the water.”
‘It kills the filter’
Asked if it’s possible to clean the water once sargassum has dissolved in it, Mr. Wheatley said the desalination plant has been running through filters trying to do so — forcing the facility to reduce its output.
“It kills the filter,” he said. “It kills the filters in, like, no time.”
The minister also agreed that the plant’s intake pipe should be extended.
“What I told the [desalination] plant people is to not only extend the pipe out, but when you get out, bend it to the right,” he said. “Because if you follow the flow of sargassum going back out, it hugs the shoreline.”
Ms. Flax-Brutus, however, said such ideas have been in circulation for years.
“We’ve asked them to look at booms,” she said. “We’ve asked them to look at extending the intake pipe for the water plant. I don’t know if any work had been done on extending the intake pipe, because they do what they do and they never say anything until we start to make a lot of noise.”
Wood, silver gone black
Mr. Wheatley said he too has been affected by the seaweed in recent months.
“You have to close the windows, and even then the wood turns black,” he said. “The silver turns black. Everything turns black.”
Asked if he found the smell objectionable, the minister responded, “Very much so.”
Officials tight-lipped
Communications and Works Minister Kye Rymer told the Beacon that he had asked the BVI Ports Authority recently to address the sargassum build-up in Road Harbour.
Otherwise, however, he said he had no up-to-date knowledge on the sargassum problem.
ENRCC Ministry Permanent Secretary Ronald Smith-Berkeley and Deputy Premier Julian Fraser — the minister of environment, natural resources and climate change — did not respond to requests for comment.
Public update coming soon
Angela Burnett Penn, the ministry’s environment director, declined to comment on the topic but told the Beacon that a public update on the sargassum problem is expected soon.
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