Over the last decade, the Caribbean has seen massive, episodic influxes of pelagic sargassum negatively impacting coastal ecosystems, people’s livelihoods and climate-sensitive sectors. Addressing this issue solely as a hazard has proven extremely costly and attention is slowly turning towards the potential opportunities for sargassum reuse and valorization. However, turning the ‘sargassum crisis into gold’ is not easy. In this study we use a multi-method approach to learn from sargassum stakeholders (researchers, entrepreneurs and established businesses) across the Caribbean about the constraints and challenges they are facing. These can be grouped into five broad categories: (1) unpredictable supply of sargassum; (2) issues related with the chemical composition of the seaweed; (3) harvest, transport and storage; (4) governance; and (5) funding. Specific issues and potential solutions associated with each of these categories are reviewed in detail and recommended actions are mapped to five entry points along a generalized value chain to demonstrate how these actions can contribute to the development of sustainable sargassum value chains that promote economic opportunities and could help alleviate impacts of massive influxes. This paper offers guidance to policy makers and funding agencies on existing gaps and challenges that need to be addressed in order to scale-up successful and sustainable solutions to the sargassum crisis.

Monitoring the state of coral reefs is necessary to identify drivers of change and assess effectiveness of management actions. There are several widely-used survey methods, each of which is likely to exhibit different biases that should be quantified if the purpose is to combine datasets obtained via different survey methods. The latter is a particularly important consideration when switching methodologies in long-term monitoring programs and is highly relevant to the Caribbean today. This is because of the continuing need for regionally comparable coral reef monitoring datasets and the fact that the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network (GCRMN)-Caribbean node is now recommending a photoquadrat (PQ) method over the chain intercept transect method widely adopted by the members of the first truly regional monitoring network, Caribbean Coastal Marine Productivity Program (CARICOMP), in the early-1990s. Barbados, a member of the CARICOMP network, has been using a variation of the chain intercept method in its long-term coral reef monitoring program for more than two decades. Now a member of GCRMN-Caribbean, Barbados is considering switching to the PQ method in conformity with other regional members. Since we expect differences between methods, this study seeks to quantify the nature of those differences to inform Barbados and others considering switching methods. In 2017, both methods were concurrently implemented at 21 permanent monitoring plots across three major reef types in Barbados. Differences in % cover estimates for the six major benthic components, that is, hard corals, sponges, gorgonians, macroalgae, turf algae and crustose coralline algae, were examined within and among reef types. Overall, we found a complex pattern of differences between methods that depended on the benthic component, its relative abundance, and the reef type. We conclude that most benthic components would require a different conversion procedure depending on the reef type, and we provide an example of these procedures for Barbados. The factors that likely contribute to the complex pattern of between-method differences are discussed. Overall, our findings highlight that switching methods will be complicated, but not impossible. Finally, our study fills an important gap by underscoring a promising analytical framework to guide the comparison of ecological survey methods on coral reefs.

Global warming is seen as one of the greatest threats to the world's coral reefs, and with the continued rise in sea surface temperature predicted into the future, there is a great need for further understanding of how to prevent and address the damaging impacts. This is particularly so for countries whose economies depend heavily on healthy reefs, such as those of the eastern Caribbean. Here, we compare the severity of bleaching and mortality for five dominant coral species at six representative reef sites in Barbados during the two most significant warm-water events ever recorded in the eastern Caribbean, i.e., 2005 and 2010, and describe prevailing island-scale sea water conditions during both events. In so doing, we demonstrate that coral bleaching and subsequent mortality were considerably lower in 2010 than in 2005 for all species, irrespective of site, even though the anomalously warm water temperature profiles were very similar between years. We also show that during the 2010 event, Barbados was engulfed by a transient dark green turbid water mass of riverine origin coming from South America. We suggest that reduced exposure to high solar radiation associated with this transient water mass was the primary contributing factor to the lower bleaching and mortality observed in all corals. We conclude that monitoring these episodic mesoscale oceanographic features might improve risk assessments of southeastern Caribbean reefs to warm-water events in the future.

Dolphinfish in the Caribbean are fast growing and short-lived, living for about 12 to 18 months in the southern Caribbean and a maximum of 2-3 years in the north of the region. They are believed to be highly migratory, are seasonally abundant, and likely to have a more complex stock structure than the larger oceanic epipelagic species. Most of the information on dolphinfish in the western central Atlantic comes from studies in the waters of the USA and the eastern Caribbean, and there is a general paucity of information particularly for stock-based management of this species. No Caribbean country undertakes regular assessment of dolphinfish, or has put in place any species-specific management program. Yield-per-recruit analyses for this species in the eastern Caribbean suggest that maximization of Y/R is likely to lead to very low levels of mature stock biomass. A stock recruitment analysis does not show any dependency of recruitment on stock size within the observed stock size range. This suggests that recruitment failure could be sudden at some threshold below the minimum observed stock size, probably at about one third of the average observed stock size. Given the trends observed in landings of dolphinfish, a precautionary approach to management is needed for this species in the western central Atlantic. Given the migratory, shared nature of the dolphinfish resource, a regional approach to assessment and management is required. However, the institutional basis for this approach does not currently exist within the region in a form that is functional. The membership of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) does not include any of the small island states where dolphinfish is of primary importance. ICCAT would need to establish a regional presence in order to serve the needs of Caribbean states. The FAO Western Central Atlantic Fishery Commission (WECAFC) does not operate in a mode which would allow it to address this issue. The Association of Caribbean States is too new to address it within the near future. Subregional organizations with fisheries programs, such as the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), represent only a subset of states. However, given the ratification of United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and the recent International Agreement on Highly Migratory Stocks and Straddling Stocks, these organisations could take the initiative to establish a regional management programme for dolphinfish.

Queen conch (Strombus gigas Linnaeus, 1758) populations in Barbados support a small-scale unregulated fishery and government efforts are now underway to improve knowledge about the status of this valuable resource. In the present study, we contribute to these efforts by performing the first rigorous underwater assessment of queen conch on the shallow shelf. Between July and october of two consecutive years, we surveyed a total of 1210 10-m radius circular plots across 65 sites along the south (year 2007) and west (year 2008) coasts at depths of 2–15 m, representing the majority of conch fishing grounds in Barbados. Overall, conch density was low (south: 14.4 conch ha^–1; west: 4.3 conch ha^–1) and patchy, and most (approximately 90%) conch found were immature. Habitat had a significant effect on conch occurrence and conch shell characteristics over distances of several hundred meters: (1) within sites, the likelihood of finding conch increased with depth; and small, immature conch were found mainly in algal habitat, whereas larger, more mature conch were found mainly on coral habitat; (2) sites that were a few hundred meters apart tended to exhibit similar conch occurrence estimates, suggesting the existence of conch patches over such distances, and this effect was associated with habitat characteristics. Over distances of kilometers, considerable variability in conch occurrence across sites could not be accounted for by habitat alone suggesting an important role of unmeasured factors. Overall, our findings indicate that conch populations on the shallow shelf of Barbados are patchily distributed, severely depressed, and overexploited.