Help! Sargassum is a nuisance in my district!
Eighth District Representative Marlon Penn is sounding the alarm over what he calls an “ongoing emergency” — the massive sargassum seaweed invasion choking BVI’s coastlines, ports, and beaches.
Penn says the issue is hitting his constituency hard, especially the western end in areas like Long Bay where many seniors swim. Those shallow, accessible waters are being buried under thick mats of rotting seaweed.
He thanked the Minister of Environment and his team for allocating funds to clear the most affected areas in his district but warned that simply removing the sargassum is not a long-term fix. Penn likened the sight of the seaweed rolling in to a wartime invasion, describing it as “a platoon coming to drop bombs on our shoreline.”
He said the impacts go far beyond tourism as the plant corrodes metals, and its stench could have an impact on health. Across the Caribbean, sargassum is battering economies that rely heavily on beach tourism.
Hotels have reported mass cancellations, fishing communities are losing income, and coastal waters are becoming unsafe for swimming. Yet, these coastal nations have not found a viable way to address the issue, with most resorting to expensive and temporary cleanup efforts.
Scientists link the record blooms to a combination of factors, including warmer ocean temperatures, nutrient runoff from rivers like the Amazon, and changing ocean currents that carry the seaweed across the Atlantic in what’s known as the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt.
“This is an annual problem, and it’s getting worse,” Penn said. “We must budget properly, learn from what other countries are doing in the region, and take a strategic approach to address this issue.”
With the budget cycle starting in October, Penn is calling on the Premier and Cabinet to commit serious, dedicated funding — warning that failure to act decisively could cause lasting harm to the economy, the environment, and public health.
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Help you say? But I understand you sat down in your car outside the House of Assembly to avoid debating the vote of no confidence and voting on it now you bawling help? Everything supposed to be fine in country according to your actions so why you crying now?
What a chump you are dude! Yuo go to HOA and smile up wid the other side and boast of your ‘family ties’; burr ‘cuz this’ & ‘cuz that’.
Well go beg your cousins to help your constituents ’cause you ain’t no dang use! Collecting paycheck all these years and just like Snaggapuss down hog city – done diddley squat for them years! But you and he going colllect FAT PAYCHECKS for the GREEDY BILL!! That’s one of the reasons you just dgaf!
Boss you are L E S S!
I bet $1000 that YOU and Ronnie won’t be to the Opposition press conference tomorrow! Then going say you travelling or some other BS just lie how you avoided the Vote Of No Confidence!
LMAO
Whereas those more visionary see sargassum seaweed, not as a problem, but as a GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY.
https://www.thepeoplestribunesxm.com/opinion-articles/sargassum-a-golden-opportunity
I enquired with a friend employed in the scientific endeavours just the other day as to whether or not the sargassum could be fermented, into vodka, for example. She replied yes, but that the seaweed had undoubtedly absorbed too many bad metallic elements, such as mercury, for it to be viable.
Same amount that Vybes Kartel received will do you fine
Just the other day I noticed a cardboard container from a local supermarket marked seaweed snacks. Is it possible that we are already unknowingly eating this stuff.
Instead if screaming for help you are in tbe position to get the help needed. Who are you screaning to? Well my advice is to research how seaweed can be used in agriculfure or bio-fuels.
How to prevent the seaweed from reaching fhe shoreline by using buoys and other diversion methods.
You politicians need to get up off your asses and do real work that impact people’s lives positively.
You all travel all over the world at tax payers expense and don’t bring back anything that can help in improving the territory’s infrastracture. Marlon get a life. You all make me sick.
Help how???? People just talk for talking sake!!! What can anyone really do with this large volume of sargassum that is coming in?
I hope GBM is being paid well for their daily blogging on this site. They can still see no wrong in their man but their eyes will open soon.
This is a climate change problem. Use the millions you have collected to fight climate change to direct the sargassum with booms or grind it up and deposit it offshore.
The sea is cleaning itself!
Humans take daily showers, and conduct relational bodily functions, to rid the body of wastes!
The sea, likewise!
THIS, TOO, shall pass!
I see the water system in the BVI is going to end up like the water in Flint Michigan.
Vincent said he put It in budget since 2019 and he was suprise when butgeted was passed six plus years now. Are you suprised too. Bunch of clowns.
So tils only now he figure out its a nuisance. ? He should be shame to say such things!!
with exposed east coasts must deal with sargassum forever. The best solution is to keep the algae at sea by protecting vulnerable coastlines with moored floating booms. Sargassum moves with the wind and current in a westerly direction so let it pass through the BVI to affect the other islands down wind and current from here.
It is a symptom of a philosophy that rules the world and is particularly entrenched in the Caribbean where people are enslaved by the religion of money and capitalism.
More more more from a finite set of resources will eventually show its limitations. Those limits come to us in the form of stronger hurricanes, dying reefs and sargassum.
All because we want more more more because that’s what the high priests tell us is essential for life.
As knowledge of nature and its systems is lost, we get these impacts of ignorance.
We need to start re-learning asap.
The plant corrodes metals, and its stench could have an impact on health. Really?
Please do not try to lessen this in any way. The stench you so casually talk about is a gas, Hydrogen Sulfide, a byproduct of rotten Sargassum. It’s not that it could have an impact on health, it does impact health,the question is how much it affects health. Depending on the concentration inhaled, it causes eye irritation, skin irritation, breathing problems, memory loss, dizziness, accumulation of fluid in your lungs, brain & heart issues that may lead to death.
Knowing all this, you decided to clean the shoreline and store the Sargassum in huge piles to rot above ground, in the area going towards the Bridge in East End.
At that quantity, the rotten scent is rediculous and many people after smelling it, immediately experience nausea and dizziness. Ask anyone who attended the jouvert. The smell is nauseous from the time you reach the church.
So please don’t make any slight remark about the stench and that it may cause health problems, when you are fully aware of the situation.