Sargassum surges in Mexico: From nuisance to new green industry?

By Sandra Weiss 2023 is shaping up to be a banner year for sargassum, a type of brown macroalgae now starting to wash up on beaches across the Caribbean. The thick dead tangled heaps of seaweed stink like rotten eggs and could cost many millions in holiday revenues this summer. Explosive growth and overabundance of sargassum in recent years is possibly due to overuse by Brazilian industrial agribusiness of nutrient-rich synthetic fertilizers, which run off into tributaries feeding the Amazon River and the warming Atlantic Ocean. Fertilization by sewage flowing into the sea could also contribut…

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