(3 Jun 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Humacao, Puerto Rico – 02 June 2025
++MUTE++
1. Drone video of sargassum accumulation on shores and beaches
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Yabucoa, Puerto Rico – 02 June 2025
2. Sargassum on beach
3. Drone of sargassum on shores and beaches ++MUTE++
4. Sargassum on beach, small insects flying all over the sargassum
5. Drone various of sargassum on shores ++MUTE++
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Humacao, Puerto Rico – 02 June 2025
6. Fisherman José Rodríguez with net
7. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) José Rodríguez, fisherman:
“The sargassum is a very bad thing for fishermen because you can’t fish properly because everything comes out full of sargassum, which is very strong. The sargassum reaches the shores. Throwing the nets also doesn’t work. The fishermen that fish with nets get full of sargassum and this is a problem because the fish leave the area."
8. Rodríguez degutting a fish
9. Fishermen trying to fish among the sargassum
10 . Concrete structure in the beach full of sargassum
11. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) José R odríguez, fisherman:
“Sargassum is unpredictable, you can’t tell when it comes. Sargassum comes from the bottom of the sea from the currents. On all the beaches of Puerto Rico there is sargassum, here in Yabucoa and Humacao, Las Croabas. It’s very deep, and there’s a lot of sargassum. It’s very difficult to eliminate it. For us, who live on the coast and fishermen, it is very difficult. We come every day to throw our net to see what God gives us in fishing to take to our homes.”
12. Drone of sargassum on shores and beaches ++MUTE++
13. Fisherman José Rodríguez walking away
STORYLINE:
A record amount of sargassum piled up across the Caribbean and nearby areas in May, and more is expected this month, according to a new report.
The brown prickly algae are suffocating shorelines from Puerto Rico to Guyana and beyond, disrupting tourism, killing wildlife and even releasing toxic gases that forced one school in the French Caribbean Island of Martinique to temporarily close.
For fishermen and others who live along the coasts affected by sargassum, it is creating a serious problem.
"The sargassum is a very bad thing for fishermen because you can’t fish," said José Rodríguez, a fisherman in Humacao, Puerto Rico.
"Throwing the nets also doesn’t work. The fishermen that fish with nets get full of sargassum and this is a problem because the fish leave," he said on a recent day.
The amount — 38 million metric tons — is the biggest quantity of algae observed across the Caribbean Sea, the western and eastern Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico since scientists began studying the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt in 2011, said Brian Barnes, an assistant research professor at the University of South Florida who worked on the report published on Monday by the University of South Florida’s Optical Oceanography Lab.
The previous record was set in June 2022, with some 22 million metric tons.
Three different types of sargassum exist in the Caribbean and nearby areas, reproducing asexually as they remain afloat thanks to tiny air sacs.
Experts also have said that agricultural runoff, warming waters and changes in wind, current and rain could have an effect.
It can block sunlight that coral reefs need to survive, and if the algae sinks, it can smother reefs and sea grasses.
Once it reaches shore, the creatures living in the algae die or are picked off by birds, Barnes said.
Huge piles of stinky seaweed also are a headache for the Caribbean, where tourism often generates big money for small islands.
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