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Mats of seaweed have piled up at Lumley and Aberdeen beaches. While the seaweed has been a norm for the past several years, locals and visitors have been prevented from using the white sand beaches.
A local fisherman, Santigie complained that the seaweed most times prevent them from hauling their canoes and other fishing boats up to the beach.
“Even when you have hauled your boat it is difficult to have volunteers assist in drawing your nets to shore,” he said.
The fisherman said some people are scared of the seaweed while some hate its smell.
The two beaches are also a famous tourist destination. Most local and foreign tourists love to brisk walk on the sand after a dinner or drink at a nearby restaurant or bar but the seaweed has put that on hiatus.
Popular belief among locals pointed out that the seaweed is caused by large ship heading for Pepel Port.
But University of Florida Scientist, Professor Stephen P. Leatherman believes that seaweed is caused by the Sargasso Sea – a 2-million-square-nautical-mile haven of biodiversity that lies east of Bermuda in the Atlantic Ocean.
The Sargasso is named for sargassum, a free-floating brown seaweed that grows in its calm, clear waters. In the open ocean this seaweed serves as nursery grounds and a haven for sea life.
“In my work as a coastal scientist, I’ve watched these invasions become the new normal, choking beaches and turning clear blue waters golden brown,” Professor Leatherman said.
The two beaches are also a famous tourist destination. Most local and foreign tourists love to brisk walk on the sand after a dinner or drink at a nearby restaurant or bar but the seaweed has put that on hiatus.
In previous years, the seaweed is cleared by authorities, local organisations and community people playing football on the beach.
Although authorities have yet to announce when the beaches would be cleared of the seaweed, the local population expects it to be in the coming days when there is a clear weather because the Sierra Leone Metrological Agency said that July will be one of the wettest months this year.
