The beach invader
Keeping seaweed in check
For the past decade, a prolific beach invader has wreaked seasonal havoc on idyllic beaches in the tropical Atlantic. A Southampton research team is working to understand this threat.
From the eastern coast of Mexico to the west coast of Africa – and everywhere in between – a potent-smelling seaweed known as ‘sargassum’ is devastating not only beaches, but livelihoods too. Moreover, climate change appears to be making it worse.
Since 2011, it has made its presence so prevalent that it has had researchers around the world grappling to understand where it comes from and what to do with the thousands of tons that wash up on shores every year.
Emma Tompkins , Professor of Geography, Environment and Development, is part of a team at Southampton focusing on those questions. She also has a personal interest in understanding the seaweed conundrum, as she explained: “My family emigrated to the Cayman Islands 35 years ago. I visited in 2018 and our favourite beach was covered in stinking seaweed, so much so that we couldn’t go into the sea. It was just bizarre.”
This stinking seaweed was, Emma discovered, sargassum.
“The mats of sargassum can be massive, and when it washes to shore it can pile metres high. It can be devastating. As it decomposes, it stinks, can cause skin irritation and it gives off gases that can cause breathing difficulties,” explains Emma.
It’s affecting fishermen’s ability to go out and fish in boats; it’s affecting tourism as people cannot go in the sea or on the beaches because it smells so bad; and it’s a problem for ecosystems – particularly for turtles that go to lay their eggs on beaches in the summer when sargassum is at its worst.
Back in Southampton, Emma worked with Robert Marsh , Professor in Oceanography and Climate, Dr Yue Zhang , Lecturer in Environmental Engineering, and researcher Dr Susan Hanson to understand more about sargassum, finding out both climate and oceanic drivers are behind it.
Read the full story in Re:action , the University’s research and enterprise magazine.
Related Staff Member
Professor Emma Tompkins
Emma Tompkins is a Professor of Geography, Environment and Development. She has worked on human dimensions of climate change adaptation since 2001 specifically barriers and limits to institutional adaptation, public-private partnerships for adaptation, and drivers of individual action and inaction, as well as national policy on adaptation.
Read moreRelated Staff Member
Professor Robert Marsh BSc, MSc, PhD
As a physical oceanographer, my research reveals how our restless oceans shape the world around us. Interdisciplinary studies concern the drift of objects as diverse as sea turtle hatchlings, volcanic pumice and icebergs. In some places, objects move swiftly with ocean currents that are quite steady and predictable. Elsewhere, they encounter the chaos of swirling “eddies”. To fully understand and predict the resulting patterns of ocean drift, our challenge is to carefully account for both currents and eddies at global scale.
The same currents that carry floating objects play a grander role in conveying vast quantities of heat over great distances and depths, moderating our climate here in the UK and pacing the current rate of global warming. The oceans also play a pivotal role in the hydrological cycle, which appears to be intensifying with climate change. As a climate scientist, I use a rich variety of data and advanced computer models to explore such ways that the oceans are changing our world.
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Dr Yue Zhang BEng MEng PhD FHEA
Dr Yue Zhang is a Lecturer in Environmental Engineering within Engineering and Physical Sciences at the University of Southampton.
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Ms Susan Hanson
Ms Susan Hanson is Visiting Senior Reseacher within Engineering and Physical Sciences at the University of Southampton.
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