Researchers from across Florida have come together to turn a common cause of frustration for many beach-goers into a new food opportunity.
Sargassum is that leafy brown seaweed that covers many Caribbean and South Floridian beaches. When it washes up on shore it can smell and bring along some parasites with it. Aside from the itchy and smelly inconvenience to beach goers, it can also block light for marine life and cause fish kills.
Sargassum’s environmental impact is one reason why Imran Ahmad, a food science and technology research professor at Florida International University, started to look into the brown algae.
“I never thought about [it] from [a] food angle,” Ahmad said. He said that he and other researchers were asked to look into ways to get rid of sargassum since large amounts started washing up on Florida’s beaches in 2011.
“My focus was, 'Can we use it for like fish feed or probably animal feed?’” Ahmad said. “ I found there was a lot of interesting ingredients that we could use, but there was a problem [on] how to extract them and would [it] be acceptable for food purposes.”
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That is where Ahmad said almost 4 years of research began. He and researchers from the Chaplin School of Hospitality & Tourism Management at FIU, Florida Atlantic University and Florida State University came up with two new approaches to extract alginate from the sargassum.
Alginate is a complex carb that is often used in sports drinks and gels and can be used to provide structure to processed foods like simple soups and salad dressings. The two approaches the researchers developed are called high pressure processing and sonication that helps maintain more of the natural elements of the sargassum alginate. Ahmad said that current sources of alginate require going out into the ocean to find the algae that can be extracted. Sargassum on beaches is readily accessible.
“This look[s] like nature gave us a gift,” Ahmad said. “So, use it and the rest of the material can go to biofuel, can go to animal feed, can go to fish feed, and then we extract something more valuable, more expensive.”
Ahmad said now that the researchers can extract the alginate they are going through safety processes to confirm that it is food safe. It could take years before it would be approved by the Food and Drug Administration to actually be consumed.
“It can create a new source of income or industry for the local cities,” Ahmad said. “Somebody might be starting a business out of it.”
The main goal of Ahmad and his colleagues’ research is not to completely eradicate sargassum, but if this process becomes common in the future it might be a helpful way to get rid of large amounts of it.
“Tons of sargassum will end up in a very small amount of alginate,” Ahmad said. He said that they hope to take this environmental problem and turn it into an opportunity for more sustainable food uses.
