SOS Carbon

The coast accumulation of sargassum is sapping hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue from the Caribbean tourism industry, devastating standards of living for coastal communities, damaging local ecosystems, and contributing to global climate change.

SOS Carbon provides superior sargassum collection services promoting a circular solution that enables the use of sargassum as raw material for value-added products that other companies could use for valorization, our Littoral Collection Module (LCM), by far the most cost-effective and rapidly scalable sargassum harvester on the coast. This system prevents sargassum landfall while also providing formal employment to the local fishermen. SOS Carbon aims to raise standards-of-living and reduce environmental impact by enabling wide-spread, high-capacity, and sustainable sargassum collection by deploying its LCMs Caribbean-wide. SOS Carbon has also developed a method for intercepting and sinking sargassum in the open ocean, which the company works to implement in select locations around the Caribbean.

The sargassum originates between northeast Brazil and the Gulf of Guinea traveling to the Caribbean with the help of sea's currents creating a huge accumulation of sargassum on the coast of the Caribbean beaches resulting in losing hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue from the Caribbean tourism industry, devastating standards of living for coastal communities, damaging local marine ecosystems, killing corals, beach erosion, affecting human health and contributing to global climate change. 

Current countermeasures are capital intensive, costly to operate and maintain, visually polluting, unsafe for workers, unsustainable, unable to reduce 100% of sargassum landfall, and inaccessible to civilians outside high-value tourist locations. This leaves a big opportunity and customer demand for a cost-effective, rapidly scalable, non-visually-polluting, safe, sustainable, highly effective, and democratized long-term solution. It has been over a decade since the start of Caribbean sargassum inundations. 

Sargassum is fundamentally a waste management problem and solutions do exist. Those with influence and resources should choose and enable sensible solutions more widely and rapidly.

SOS Carbon has been working in two technologies: The Sargassum Ocean Sequestration of Carbon (SOS Carbon) and the Littoral Collection Module (LCM)

The Sargassum Ocean Sequestration of Carbon consists of an open ocean system that is equipt to intercept and sink sargassum with high volume water pumps, preventing sargassum landfall across a wide area (cities/country) while also sequestering CO2 contained in the algae.

Littoral Collection Module (LCM): Most cost-effective and rapidly scalable solution for harvesting sargassum on the coast before it makes landfall. The LCM is a detachable system that can be used for any small boats to collect the sargassum on nets, these nets are attached to the system and once they are full they can be left behind floating for a second boat to collect it.

Our main target population is small fishing communities around the coast that have no other option than sacrifice their health and financial situation when the arrival of the sargassum. Most of the organizations involved in the situation are doing individual efforts to solve the issue not guaranteeing the best results. Since 2018 we have been R&D the sargassum problem and how this affects the whole ecosystem of the area. Once we hire people from the community we give them complete training on how to properly operate the LCM and with a prior salary agreement they begin to collect the sargassum.

Also with this technology, we provide a circular solution enabling the use of sargassum as raw material for value-added products, create a sustainable operation by servicing hotels and/ or local governments.

The impact of this solution implemented in the Dominican Republic (as base Pilot and hub) with a focus on the most affected areas: Punta Cana, Bavaro, Barahona enable coverage of ~2,000km (10% Caribbean coastline) and creation of ~14,000 direct jobs.

Implementing the LCM contributes to the community not only with training & work but also to their health. Including local businesses, especially artisanal boat owners that are a crucial component for the sustainability of our operations. This solution helps the tourist to have a pleasant experience, this seaweed is not only visual contamination but when it rots emits toxic gasses creating a bad smell and affecting human health. Collecting at sea with the LCM allows the use of sargassum as raw material for example as organic fertilizer as a means for regenerative agriculture.

The SOS Carbon team at MIT designed, built, and tested two technologies, a method for sequestering sargassum "The Sargassum Ocean Sequestration of Carbon" (SOS Carbon) it works by pumping the seaweed to a critical depth in the ocean, at this moment the entire plant is rendered negatively buoyant and continues sinking into the ocean and the Littoral Collection Module (LCM) a one-of-a-kind, low-cost, low-impact collection device that retrofits onto any small artisanal boat. The LCM is designed for mass manufacture and engineered for maximized operator ergonomics and safety. Both of these technologies were validated and test on two coastal areas of the Dominican Republic, the SOS Carbon in Calderas Bani and the LCM in the Punta Cana and Bavaro area.

We have partnered with several organizations that are related to our mission, creating awareness about the problem and the solution that we've developed to implement nationwide and across the Caribbean.

Several implemented solutions active on the market face limitations when the amount of sargassum overflows the capacity of their system making it almost impossible to cover the demand due to the cost of production and technical complexity of their vessel. Both the Sargassum Ocean Sequestration of Carbon (SOS Carbon) and the Littoral Collection Module (LCM) are groundbreaking technologies in the market due to the way we approach the problem. However, we like to focus on the LCM since it's a very low-cost implementation and uses artisanal fishing boats that are already in the area, creating a quickly scalable system with the support of the local fishing community. These attributes enhance the market to change and enable positive impacts on the sector. 

When the LCM was designed we tried to stay as simple and safe as possible including parts and operation, this will help us to have a mass production design that could be manufacture in any location at its convenience.

Our organization currently serves 7 Fishermans with direct employment in the Punta Cana and Bavaro area. They have also been part of the pilots executed in their areas. In one year we estimate around 40 people. In Five years we estimated that number will be around 250.

SOS Carbon measures the progress toward our goals identifying the amount of beach distance covered by the LCM, another indicator is the fisherman direct employments follow by the amount of LCM's deployed in the area.  

Full time: 4

Part-Time: 2

Contractors: 3

Others: 7

The solution founder's backgrounds are in the engineering field with years of experience in Mechanical Engineering. Mechatronic, administration, and marketing are part of the other team member's backgrounds enhancing the professionalism within our organization. 

Our training and awareness program works with fisherman communities but also with politicians and CEOs. This sargassum problem not only affects people in the front line but from any part of the society.

Another way we promote inclusion is by making live social media interviews where people can easily access the content we promote. Our team's more special characteristic is to always be open and approachable through any communication channel giving a sense of inclusion and access to our organization.