There are multiple species of Sargassum, a type of macroalgae common in the tropical Atlantic. For centuries blooms of the harmful seaweed have floated in the open low nitrogen waters of the North Atlantic. Sargassum could not reproduce in the northern waters of the Atlantic in large amounts as it needs nitrogen to flourish. Fish excretions, upwelling, and chemical nitrogen processes in the atmosphere were the only source of nitrogen keeping the weed under control. As the world population explodes, human sewage and agricultural runoff have provided nitrogen to Atlantic waters. Fertilizer runoff became a huge problem and has increased 85% since 1985, according to a study. This living organism exploded starting around 2011 and now covers thousands of miles of open water from Africa to Mexico. The warming ocean is also a factor in the blooms.
The enormous bloom has been named the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt, and it is wreaking havoc in Africa, the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico, and South Florida. It exists in lesser amounts in other areas such as coastal Texas and North Carolina. These blooms can create coastal toxic dead zones transforming their role from a nursery to species such as Mahi Mahi, amberjacks and, larvae of multiple ocean species such as crab, shrimp, and sea turtles. Their role in the open ocean is beneficial to the health of the sea. Still, now the macroalgae “represent a danger to the quality of water, air, and the oxygenation processes that make aspects of marine life possible. The chemistry of the emerging threat can be found here.
So, how did this organism knock out the power to Puerto Rico? The Weekly Journal reports:
The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) explained today that a sargassum "event" entered the system, plugged the filters and slipped through a pipe, which yesterday caused a forced exit from Unit 1 of the Aguirre Powerplant.
This situation caused the interruption of electricity service to thousands of customers.
The public corporation explained that the pipe, which is less than an inch in diameter, is what supplies the water for the condenser.
"This pipeline in normal operation supplies 115,000 gallons of water per minute, and these filters in normal operation are cleaned once or twice a year, since they hardly collect vegetative material," PREPA stated in a press release.
Likewise, it was reported that “the discharge channel pump motors are operating, and the levels and temperatures have remained within the parameters allowed by the EPA's National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, known by its acronym in English NPDES.
On Alfonso XII Street in the Punta Santiago, a coastal neighborhood in Humacao, 62-year-old Bermuda Vázquez points toward the beach that is blanketed with brown seaweed, known as sargassum. Although it was a day off in midsummer to commemorate the emancipation of slavery in the United States, beachgoers were nowhere to be seen.
“The thing is that one is afraid of getting ill in that water with the sargassum that stinks. I’ve lived in this community all my life, and I remember when, on days like today, many people came to the beach. But you have to adapt to this sargassum,” Vázquez told the Center for Investigative Journalism (CPI, in Spanish).
Some 16 kilometers from Punta Santiago, residents of the high end Palmas del Mar complex also deal with the problem of sargassum build-up. The rotten smell caused by its decomposition is much more intense than in other areas. In the outdoor area of Chincho’s Pizza & Beer restaurant, a couple had lunch at noon that Monday.
“We’ve gotten used to that stench here, although it stays on our clothes later,” said a restaurant waitress.
To manage the significant increase of this seaweed, the management of the Palmas del Mar complex decided to build a wall in the water and purchased two sargassum extraction vessels. Meanwhile, in the Punta Santiago community, personnel from the municipality of Humacao or the Department of Natural and Environmental Resources (DNER) have never gone to collect sargassum, residents say.
Sargassum can be used for beach dune restoration and as a fertilizer for crops.
There is a lack of Mitigation plans for coastal municipalities that exclude dealing with sargassum
The awareness that the governments of coastal municipalities and the central government have about sargassum and the challenges that this marine species present to communities, ecosystems and businesses has not been enough to integrate how it will be managed in the mitigation plans prepared by the Puerto Rico Planning Board, and the 78 municipalities.
After hurricanes Irma and María in September 2017, the Central Office of Recovery, Reconstruction and Resiliency, known as COR3, asked the Planning Board to update each municipality’s mitigation plans.
This, despite the fact that in the last decade, several beaches around Puerto Rico have experienced the events of large quantities of algae reaching the shores, causing a strong stench, losses in tourism, navigation challenges for fishermen, and possible public health problems resulting from hydrogen sulfide emissions from the decomposing sargassum. Those events in which the algae arrive in massive quantities to the beaches, coastal or estuarine areas, are known as surges.
“As part of the updates within the risks that are being considered right now, no municipality has identified it as a risk, but it could be considered (the sargassum),” said Planner Rebecca Rivera-Torres from the Planning Board.
snip
On the one hand, the climate crisis continues to show a trend of rising sea temperatures, which has been pointed out as an element that, coupled with the accumulation of nutrients and sediments that float toward the sea surface west of the African continent, facilitate the development of massive quantities of sargassum that subsequently reach the coasts of Caribbean territories.
On the other hand, scientists at Texas A&M University have been working for several years on experiments on the potential use of sargassum to help mitigate coastal erosion by inserting the algae in the sand and dunes. In other instances, its accumulation on the shores is associated with temporary coastal erosion events.
The competency of LUMA is in question. In a separate article CPI writes:
The Customer Average Interruption Duration Index (CAIDI) averages the time that a power company, in this case, LUMA repairs energy interruptions. The lower the number, the better for the customer. For the months of June, July, and August 2021, it was 323 minutes. The previous year, in those same months, when PREPA still managed the transmission and distribution system, the rate was much lower: 155 minutes. In 2019, it was 152 minutes. In the US, the average is 82 minutes.
The SAIFI index (System Average Interruption Frequency Index), which measures the average number of interruptions that the customer experiences, seemed to be doing well in 2019 in Puerto Rico. PREPA reported SAIFI of less than 1.1 outages in all regions in June, July, and August. In the same months in 2021, under LUMA, the numbers were .40, .43, and .47, respectively. Irizarry says that this is the only metric in which LUMA is relatively good. The report does not include September when the outages have been almost daily.
The same months in different years were chosen for the comparison of LUMA’s metrics with PREPA’s. There are usually problems with blackouts in the summer because the demand for energy increases while generation is limited.
However, if LUMA’s first three months are compared with PREPA’s last three, it shows the deterioration in the service that clients have received, Kunkel said.
The CAIDI for all of Puerto Rico was 138 minutes from March to May 2020, while it totaled 323 under LUMA in its first three months.
“It’s very notable that in each region, the SAIDI and CAIDI are worse with LUMA,” she noted.
The writers in Climate Brief work to keep the Daily Kos community informed and engaged with breaking news about the climate crisis worldwide while providing inspiring stories of environmental heroes, opportunities for direct engagement, and perspectives on the intersection of climate activism with spirituality politics, and the arts.