Times of the Islands Winter 2019/20

green pages newsletter of the department of environment & coastal resources
activity in response to the arrival of a large cruise ship.
This is a regular occurrence with tourists visiting briefly,
touring on Segways, in buggys and on horseback, with
some choosing to experience the mangrove-lined creeks
and nature reserves. This habitat supports both rich and
diverse wildlife, whilst providing storm and flood protection
for humans. Grand Turk is exposed to the easterly
prevailing winds and so received more sargassum than
the more westerly South Caicos and Providenciales, but
we were interested to see there was no sargassum on
the Cockburn Town side of the island where most of the
tourism takes place.
As well as making observations, taking samples and
doing our lab work, we were keen to meet as many of
those involved in the tourist industry as possible to find
out if the increase in seaweed on the beaches was affecting
their businesses. We devised a quick questionnaire
and held a focus group on the three islands visited, resulting
in 100 responses from diverse operations including
hoteliers, jet ski hirers, and dive and sport fishing companies.
The results were very interesting, revealing that
while seaweed could be a problem where it needed to
be removed from beaches or could damage equipment
(for example, clogging jet ski intakes), there were also
some benefits—the floating rafts attract large predatory
fish, benefitting sports fishing, and can stabilise beaches,
preventing erosion.
As always seems to be the case, initial research has
generated as many questions as answers! There is no real
information about how much sargassum is being deposited
on the beaches and no regional information on where
or when this is happening, let alone what is causing the
increased amounts seen recently. To try to build up a
more detailed picture, monitoring sites have been set up
and there is an opportunity for anyone to get involved
by sending photos with the date and location through
an app called epicollect5. Simply find and download the
app, select “sargassum watch” and start collecting scientific
data that will feed into a Caribbean-wide monitoring.
Take a picture with the app every time you go to the
beach even if it is sargassum free. It’s so easy to become
a citizen scientist and your help is greatly appreciated!
We were sad to leave but returned with samples of
the seaweed which is now producing interesting results
in the university laboratories. It is early days, but the
initial results are causing some excitement among the
chemists and we expect full results to be available in the
near future. We feel a lot has been achieved in the first
six months of this two-year project, and we are grateful
to Darwin Plus for enabling us the opportunity to take
part in this research and to experience the “Beautiful by
Nature” Turks & Caicos Islands. a
If you would like to contribute any photos to our project
to help build on our sargassum map in the TCI, you can
do so by emailing them to franziskaelmer@hotmail.com.
Times of the Islands Winter 2019/20 39