Fishermen encouraged to cultivate seaweed
If you live in Belize City you’ve seen or more likely heard the cart man and his familiar refrain of “seaweed”. According to experts now in the country, if fishermen play their cards right, all that seaweed in our waters will one day provide them with extra cash, in addition to a healthy drink. News Five’s Jacqueline Woods reports.
Jacqueline Woods, Reporting
The cultivation of seaweed, or sea moss as it is well known in the wider Caribbean, is being promoted as an alternative to over fishing. In Belize, seaweed is primarily used to make a local beverage. In the last few years, however, many new products using seaweed have appeared on the regional market prompting those in the local industry to fish for something new. According to Caribbean Natural Resources Institute Research Associate, Allan Smith, Belize is in a unique position because it is home to one of the most marketable of Caribbean seaweeds.
Allan Smith, Research Assoc., C.N.R.I.
“It is used throughout the Eastern Caribbean, throughout the English Speaking Caribbean. We are actually cultivating in a number of other countries, but the interesting thing is we are cultivating the Belize seaweed that I took from here in 1997. So we are coming back now to pass on the technology, to return the technology to the place where the seaweed originated. We are growing about four different species in other islands, but the most successful one now is the one that you harvest in Belize”
Jacqueline Woods
“What is the specie and why is it so popular?”
Allan Smith
“The scientific name is eucheuma, it grows well, it grows fast, it stays clean on the farm lines, and can be harvested in a very short period of time. It has been most successful than any of the other species that have been grown so far.”
Efforts are being made to set up a pilot farm that will include the participation of local fishermen. Today, the first of two workshops got underway at the Belize Fishermen Cooperative Association.
Melanie McField, World Wildlife Fund
“The real reason we are doing this a conservation organisation is to give fishermen alternatives to over fishing. We want to diversify their options for their income so they don’t have to fish out the last fish and they have a variety of different income generating activities, fishing being one of them. But this mariculture of seaweed is actually something that is benign or even helpful for the environment because it absorbs nutrients as you grow it, it provides some habitat for fish, so it is actually a good type of aquaculture, it doesn?t have negative impacts. So we are trying to encourage them how to do it and I think we can make some great products in Belize, made from seaweed.”
B.F.C.A. Development Officer Mustafa Touré says he hopes the workshop is the start of something new for the local and industrial markets.
Mustafa Touré, B.C.F.A. Development Officer
“Seaweed is used in ice cream, it is used in beauty products, it is used in many, many things. So we are hoping that this can be the beginning of how to produce good quantities of seaweed for the industrial market, as well as for the local market.”
That Placencia workshop will take place from October twentieth to the twenty-second. Jacqueline Woods for News Five.
The workshops are sponsored by the B.F.C.A., W.W.F. and the International Coral Reef Action Network.
