MARIGOT: In its monitoring and forecasting bulletin for the stranding of pelagic sargassum for the northern islands released this Monday, August 22, 2022, Meteo France maintains the risk of stranding medium for the territory of St. Martin while the risk is high for St. Barts.
The detections are still numerous in the east of the Caribbean arc, and more precisely in the 200 km eastward on the Atlantic. The currents are still favorable to a progression towards the Antilles. For the northern islands, arrivals of sargassum for both territories are expected. Except for cyclonic influence, the first waves of these algae will hit Saint-Martin in the middle of this week. The Dutch part will also be affected by the phenomenon. As far as Saint-Barthélemy is concerned, other rafts and filaments of varying lengths are in transit towards the west. Over the next two weeks, the risk remains high in the French West Indies and we can still expect regular groundings on exposed beaches. Indeed, most of the rafts arrive from the South-South-East coming from Barbados and its surroundings.
Good to know
To better understand how the service of Meteo France proceeds to establish its forecasts and its estimate of the risk of stranding, the detection, and location of Sargassum rafts around the Caribbean arc are carried out by remote sensing at medium and high resolution after acquisition and specific post-processing of data from optical sensors on board several satellites: MODIS (Aqua and Terra satellites), at 1km resolution; OLCI (Sentinel 3A/3B satellites) at 300m resolution and MSI (Sentinel 2A/2B satellites) at 10-30m resolution. Satellite data collection and analysis are performed by Météo France. This model simulates the displacement of the identified slicks by taking into account the combined effect of surface wind friction on the Sargassum and the evolution of their movement by marine currents. The risk of stranding of the algae is estimated, on a scale of low to very high, from the drift forecast and the number of Sargassum beds reaching the identified coastal monitoring area. Unfortunately, the current forecast chain does not allow for a fine-grained estimate of the amount́ of seaweed likely to strand even though the forecasts remain relevant.
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