Fw: Mexico Declares War on Stinky Seaweed or Golden mCDR op?

[Greg Rau]

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/04/climate/mexico-declares-war-sargassum-seaweed.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

With 30Mt of sargassum (and growing) accumulating in the W Atlantic, (why) isn't this a golden opportunity for the bio mCDR crowd to test out their marine biomas sinking, burying, soil enrichnent, biocharing and refining ideas for mCDR? Where else are you going to get such easily harvested and socially-icensed-to-remove marine biomass? Worries about also sequestering precious nutrients could be allayed because biomass growth is apparently being fueled by nutrient runoff from the Amazon. Those seeking true eco restoration/perfection could transport the biomass or at least the nutrients up the Amazon River and redeposit on soils there, but at a cost. In any case, pay for the mCDR efforts by selling C credits.  Anyway, If bio mCDR doesn't work with this stuff, where will it work? 

Greg  

[Michael Hayes]

Greg, et al., 

In raw form, that seaweed has a high arsenic content and thus direct use on soils is problematic. However, with a biorefinery process that cooks the biomass down for biostimulant extraction and also to feed biochar production, the arsenic gets locked away inside the biochar. I would also like to add that there are many forms of life in that biomass and the calcium from the calcium rich species in the biomass can help lock the arsenic into to biochar matrix.

As such, the main issue is the energy needed to cook such a great volume of biomass. 

That issue might be handled by large scale floating tanks that absord solar radiation that does the initial relativelylow temperature cook-down. Below is an example of the type of tankage that can use passive solar powered: 

https://youtu.be/qXtVQWHgNig?is=vzr8gDSoaDMak028

As a side note, such floating biomass cookers can possibly provide some physical defense against the biomass from comming to shore. 

Best regards 

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[Michael Hayes]

Here is a more refined AI image. The scale is off, the collection funnel can be many kilometers wide. 

The fishery harvest can generate some funds for the community along with the other downstream co-products.

[Greg Rau]

Thanks, Chuck. No I hadn’t seen it, but good to see that something is being done, though nothing mentioned specifically about CDR and C credits. Perhaps the sarga bricks guy or sarga plastics could qualify for credits but only after C emissions from  the processing were subtracted. Just securely bury the stuff or drop into an anoxic zone to minimize C emissions overhead. In any case you’d need a convincing decomp C emissions baseline and timeline from which to then establish decomp C emission avoided timeline and thus crediting of the C- and Sea-questration.  ;-)

Greg

On Aug 8, 2026, at 8:56 AM, Charles H. Greene <ch...@cornell.edu> wrote:

 Hi Greg:

Did you see this?

Cheers,

Chuck

Chief Scientist
Sustainable Climate Solutions Program
Friday Harbor Laboratories
University of Washington
Friday Harbor, WA 98250
https://www.chuckgreene.com

President-Elect
Ocean Sciences Section
American Geophysical Union