It’s hard to miss the scent of weed hovering over Key West, seemingly most pungent near the island’s beaches. But this isn’t the Willie Nelson smell of weed.
Key West — and much of Florida, Mexico, Central America, Puerto Rico and the Caribbean — are dealing with an unprecedented onslaught of seaweed, specifically sargassum weed, washing up on beaches, where it rots, stinks and causes significant health, environmental and economic problems. Key West has regularly experienced a summertime influx of sargassum weed on island beaches for the past 15 years or so, but never to this degree.
“I’ve met with some elderly residents who are basically trapped in their homes because the hydrogen sulfide released by the sargassum is a health hazard,” said Key West Mayor Sam Kaufman, who called a Sept. 22 meeting to discuss the sargassum problem and hear from experts about its collection, management and reuse efforts in other countries, as the United States is the only country that still prohibits the removal of sargassum from nearshore waters, which is when it is viable as a commodity.
The Sept. 22 meeting included presentations from sargassum experts who are exploring its use in manufacturing biofuels, as well as from Key West resident Ed Russo, who leads President Donald Trump’s Environmental Advisory Task Force.
“The issue for Key West is not only environmental; it’s public health, and it’s economic,” Russo said at the Sept. 22 meeting. “When it gets to the beaches of Key West and it starts to decompose, it smells like rotten eggs. That’s not just an annoyance; it’s a serious public health problem. It’s something that’s very serious and we have to treat it like that.”
The meeting, which did not include any votes or final decisions, was the first of what Kaufman sees as a frequent series to address the problem.
Russo said that until recently, sargassum was an internationally protected species because it’s a habitat for invertebrates and other marine creatures.
“There has been a long effort to make sure that people do not harvest sargassum at sea,” Russo said. “But all those laws have changed, and now every country in the world except for one allows for harvesting sargassum at sea, and that one country that doesn’t allow harvesting sargassum in their waters is the United States, and I’ve been working, eliciting help from NOAA, which is the main government agency that oversees all this. The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration is the organization that heads all this stuff. But to get rid of this law is very difficult because there’s multiple agencies involved. … On top of that, the state of Florida also restricts and eliminates the possibility of harvesting sargassum and seaweed. However, I’ve been successful in getting them to agree to exempt the work that is about to happen by providing exemptions for the captains of the ships that we’re planning to use to harvest sargassum at sea. But my one provision is that the person who has to have operational control of all of this is our friend Brian Lapointe.”
Kaufman and commissioners Chris Massicotte and Donie Lee all acknowledged the severity of the problem and said they were eager to cooperate with Russo, the county, the Tourist Development Council and Islamorada, where similar conversations are taking place.
