The Seaweed at the End of the World
Topics:
Keywords: Sargassum blooms; Mexican Caribbean; History of Ocean Science; Postcolonial Literature; Climate Change; Critical Ocean Studies; Blue Capitalism
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract
Authors:
Aaron Bobrow-Strain, Whitman College
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Abstract
In spring of 2011, sargassum seaweed suddenly leapt from its ancient home in the Sargasso Sea to establish itself in the tropical Atlantic. There, it grew into an 8,800-kilometer, 20-million-metric-ton serpentine band circulating between West Africa, Brazil, and the Caribbean. At sea, sargassum’s weedy profusion provides crucial habitat for dozens of important species, helps anchor Atlantic foodchains, and sequesters carbon. But the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt (GASB), as oceanographers named the new phenomenon, has mostly drawn attention because its annual journey puts it on a collision course with Caribbean shores. From April through September, millions of tons of beached sargassum inundate ecosystems, crash tourism and fishing economies, and sicken residents. With successive record blooms in 2015, 2018, and 2022, the slow catastrophe of sargassum inundations has raised the specter of an “unlivable Caribbean.” This paper “reroutes” dominant approaches to Caribbean sargassum beachings. Tacking between critical ocean studies, history of science, and postcolonial literature, it critiques visions of the nomadic macro-algae as “hostile invader” or “Blue capitalist bonanza.” Taking a cue from the writings of Derek Walcott and Édouard Glissant, it looks to the sargassum itself for lessons about living in an unlivable world. Sargassum beachings are ghosts of the European colonization. They are the watery offspring of modernist land projects in West Africa, the Amazon, and beyond. And, in their easy overwhelming of mainstream efforts to rescue a racial capitalist normalcy by battling or exploiting inundations, they are guides to living in vulnerable relation to more-than-human life and each other.
The Seaweed at the End of the World
Category
Paper Abstract