Addressing the Massive Influx of Sargassum in the Dominican Republic: Transforming an Environmental Challenge into a Sustainable Development Opportunity

Since the year 2011 the Caribbean region has seen a massive seasonal influx of pelagic Sargassum. The proliferation of this algae adversely affects the island nations by deteriorating their coastal and marine ecosystems, like coral reefs; decreasing biodiversity, and lowering water quality, while also diminishing tourism revenue, which may be the economic backbone of most countries in this region.  The proliferation of Sargassum seaweed and its effects on Guadalupe and Dominican Republic are directly linked to Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14, which seeks to "conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development". The impact from the seasonal assault on both nations has led to different mitigation, usage, and conservation strategies that can be developed into a comprehensive program for the management and valorization of sargassum, which in turn can become an opportunity for sustainable development.

This work will present the strategies followed by a group of universities within the Dominican Republic’s interuniversity Sargassum research network which tackle the arrivals through four fundamental research lines:

- Monitoring and prediction: The Dominican Republic is developing a prediction model based on aerial and satellite imagery, GPS tracking and ocean current models which will try and identify sargassum accumulation from trajectories through monitoring of sargassum windrows. This work includes the deployment of a nanosatellite focused on sargassum monitoring in coastal waters.

- Containment and collection: the group has made advances in sargassum containment through sea barriers and water collection in order to guarantee high quality biomass for value aggregated processing.

- Valorization: Sargassum is being processed through modular systems to obtain biomass that can be converted into energy (via anaerobic digestion or gasification), biofertilizers, biochars, activated carbon (through both conventional and microwave pyrolysis), alginate, and biocomposites of fibers and biopolymers.

- Impact assessment and management: experiences in management research will be shared, especially in the analysis of risk perception and the development of a comprehensive management model for sargassum in the Dominican Republic, which guarantees compliance with SDG 14 by 2030, as proposed by the United Nations.