Clinging fauna associated with nearshore pelagic sargassum rafts in the Eastern Caribbean: Implications for coastal in-water harvesting.

ABSTRACT

Tropical Atlantic blooms of pelagic Sargassum species are associated with severe inundation events along the coasts of Caribbean and West African nations that cause extensive ecological and socioeconomic harm. The use of in-water harvesting as a management strategy avoids the plethora of challenges associated with shoreline inundations. Moreover, with a growing interest in the valorisation of this raw material, in-water harvesting provides the best opportunity to collect substantial amounts of 'fresh' sargassum that can be used in a variety of applications. However, in-water harvesting of sargassum will remove organisms associated with the floating habitat, resulting in loss of biodiversity, thus creating a potential management dilemma. To address this management concern, we assessed the clinging fauna associated with sargassum rafts at various distances from shore. From a total of 119 dipnet samples of sargassum, we recorded 18 taxa, across 6 phyla (Arthropoda, Mollusca, Chordata, Platyhelminthes, Nemathelminthes, Annelida) with the phylum Arthropoda being the most speciose (n = 10). Our multivariate and model selection analyses support that distance from shore and season are the most important drivers of variability in community composition and that season is the most important driver of individual abundance and number of taxa across samples. Overall, rafts within 0-3000 m of the shoreline of Barbados harbored low biodiversity and were dominated by small invertebrates (mean size 5.5 mm) of no commercial value. Results suggest that biodiversity trade-offs associated with in-water sargassum harvesting in coastal areas are likely to be negligible.