The world sees invasive seaweed. This gardener sees housing bricks.
Sargassum, the invasive, sewage-scented seaweed piling up on beaches across the Caribbean, isn’t something most people look upon kindly.
But for Omar de Jesús Vazquez Sánchez, his first encounter was “love at first sight.” “Everyone said, ‘It smells horrible!’ and I remember thinking, ‘There’s something more here,’” says Mr. Vazquez, the founder of Sargablock, a small company in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula that transforms the algae into construction blocks.
A record amount of sargassum is turning crystal blue Caribbean coast waters brown and smelling of rotten eggs as it decomposes in tourist spots from Mexico to Caribbean islands and now along the beaches of Florida’s east coast.
Researchers blame pollution, overdevelopment, and global warming for the seemingly never-ending seaweed invasion that’s
