The Ocean 'Was the Color of Chocolate.' Mexico Declares War on Seaweed. | Hacker News Reader

The Ocean 'Was the Color of Chocolate.' Mexico Declares War on Seaweed.

nytimes.com

42 pointsbookofjoe48 comments

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A picture I took yesterday on the beach in Tulum,

https://imgur.com/a/HkYhIhx

NOAA's reporting tool

https://research.noaa.gov/noaa-sargassum-tool-now-provides-d...

who knew runoff from tons of fertilizer and adding load of CO2 to the oceans would grow plants

If you’re going to make snarky vacuous comments, it’d help to get your biology right. Sargassum is algae, not a plant.

Yes, you're right algae produce way more oxygen than plants.

Algae aren't plants?! I guess I need to dive back into taxonomy.

I know Bill Gates thinks planting trees is a waste of time, but are the oceans doing this task for him?

It is interesting that the equivalent pesticide dumping has balanced out to plant growth.

I wonder if the seeweed is naturally Monsanto Ready and we could harvest this gene for a green room implementation to subvert the grip they exert over their crop lines.

https://archive.ph/VubVx

Is the title a take on the Neuromancer intro?

It's an actual quote from the article, but yes, that is an evocative reference.

The ocean next to the port city was the color of chocolate; congealing in a stone molcajete...

I lived in Cancun 10 years ago and this was already a huge issue back then.

America should do this work; it's their gulf now.

If the US was doing it, we'd only need a Little Excursion against Seaweed!

...lasting most of a decade.

The US wouldn't take action against the seaweed, unless it was in a fishing boat. Then it'd be ruthlessly assaulted with all seaweed and fishermen slaughtered, while claiming the seaweed was actually drugs.

I hate this "War on X" rhetoric. They're not going to bomb the ocean or send troops to shoot it, so why make it sound like it? Just say what they're actually going to do about it.

They’re gonna kill the whole ocean and conquer it in its entirety. Any resistance by the ocean will be futile!

Perhaps if they demonstrate a decisive victory over the forces of one Seaweed Lord, and they offer reasonable terms to the rest, they can win their vassalage without further bloodshed?

Whoever's dubbed it so doesn't know it's a quixotic effort they'll never win, just like the War on Drugs and the War on Terror.

A strange case of nominative determinism.

In the article they did send the navy.

When the only thing you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail...

If war is a constant of humanity, better it be against the seaweed than the people. Jokes aside, I agree, but in general folks love dramatic names.

"War on X" was originally a way of mocking Richard Nixon's "War on drugs". Everyone thought it was a stupid term at the time, for the reasons you list. So we started talking about the "war on cheap beer", the "war on disco music", etc (I was in college at the time). I'm not sure when people started using the term seriously.

Tangent - The War On Drugs is an excellent band.

Sounds like we need a War on "War on X"-headlines.

At least the War on Seaweed is more real than the War on Christmas.

> Just say what they're actually going to do about it.

People don't have infinite attention. That's why headlines and slogans carry so well, even when they are lossy/misleading to the reality.

I lost my best friend to the War on Christmas. His body came home stuffed with pine needles and partridge feathers.

"Those damn elves.. They came out of nowhere.. And were long gone by the time the napalm started raining.. All you could hear was a faint chime of their bells as they retreated to their tunnels.."

Do not give this administration any ideas, after all Caligula ordered his legions to wade out and attack the waves with swords.

the US has summoned the ambassador of Seaweed to answer for this

our chocolate shortage is dire!

Can this particular weed be eaten as-is, by human or animal, or is it known to e.g. be toxic or full of waste? Because it seems to me rather beneficial that the ocean washes it up on the shoreline ready for pick-up.

If I remember correctly this seaweed accumulates arsenic. They tried to use it as fertilizer before discovering this, and made the crop and the land unusable. Even burning it is dangerous.

This is a losing battle if all they do is shovel or fish it faster. The conditions in the environment are such that they favor the seaweed. Treat the cause not the effect, or else they’ll have to employ some very fancy genetic engineering to halt it.

Huh, so it is essentially a potential fix for an arsenic problem? Of course, it probably just releases the arsenic again as it decomposes, so you'd actually have to get it out of the ocean and dump it in a hole somewhere to get the arsenic out of circulation. Pretty funny if this is what is happening, carbon and arsenic capture courtesy of the Mexican tourist industry!

Currently no good use for it other than as a Biochar. Come up with a solution and save billions for the tourism industry.

Yup, every time this issue comes up the first question is can it be used for anything? Turns out, the answer so far has been a resounding “no”. It’s a super interesting problem from a purely analytical perspective as you run into roadblocks any time you think of a potential use case

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sargassum#Sustainable_uses

Find a way to lower salt & arsenic content, and it could be an excellent fertilizer.

There was a story about a guy using the seaweed as a binder for concrete.

More general details here: https://materialdistrict.com/article/from-algae-to-architect...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00456...

The big answer is not some "war on..." But instead "how can we eat it?" Or "Can it be reprocessed into something useful?"

Other people are dismissing this idea right off the cuff because of the arsenic concentration but that's a good thing. Now we use it as a feed stock for arsenic loving single celled creature. Then we concentrate it further. And again and again until you have arsenic pure enough for use. Then you can add that arsenic back into the pesticide and herbicide production processes that helped it get into the seawater instead of mining it on land.

As Close04 mentioned, sargassum accumulates arsenic. You can't eat it or use it as fertilizer without poisoning.

pistachio trees grow on polluted land though, without passing the arsenic to the nuts in lethal amounts. google states they can grow up to 1000mg arsenic/per kg soil. If you were to compost the sargassum, then grow pistachios on it until the arsenic level gets too high to kill the plant, you would at least be a step closer and it would pay for itself via the produce.

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