Plaguing paradise

SPEYSIDE on the island of Tobago has taken a direct hit. So have Skeete’s Bay, Bathsheba and other beaches on the southern and eastern coasts of Barbados. Cancún, a Mexican resort, has been struck. The bombardment takes the form of globs of sargassum seaweed which have landed on Caribbean beaches this year, forming piles that are sometimes metres deep. They emit a rotten-egg stench when they decompose, ruining holidays for anyone with a sense of smell. Hilary Beckles, the vice-chancellor of the University of the West Indies, calls it “the greatest single threat to the Caribbean economy I can imagine.”

There are more than 100 species of sargassum, possibly named after a Portuguese water flower. S. natans and S. fluitans spend their lives afloat and normally bother nobody. Buoyed by gas-filled bladders, they drift from nutrient-rich waters in the Gulf of Mexico into the Sargasso Sea.