Researchers work to turn disgusting sargassum into something delicious

Added: 2026-05-15

[00:00:00]Well, if you're planning a trip to the beach, prepare to face a smelly and slimy situation. Loads of brown seaweed known as sargassum, they are back in record amounts. Local 10's Jeff Berrian live from Hallandale Beach with a look.

[00:00:14]It's always great to start the day on the beach, Jeff, but certainly not with what you've got in your hands.

[00:00:19]Right, I'm going to save you guys a spot here. I have a perfect spot for when you get off the air, come to this beach and meet me. Yeah, this stuff is really gross, guys, you know, let me show you a little bit of a close-up of it. It's slimy, it you know, just starts to rot as soon as it comes in off of the ocean and you know, it's not something that you want to have around at all, but it could be now part of our food that we eat in a certain way. Take a look.

[00:00:44]A messy visitor that didn't wait for an invitation, arriving on South Florida beaches in wave after wave.

[00:00:54]Sargassum, the brownish seaweed with a funky name and even worse smell. Sky 10 launched along Hollywood Beach on Wednesday. Doesn't take long to spot it, ribbons of it everywhere. Turning off tourists who come here, it is the ultimate beach crasher and it has to be cleaned up, too, at a cost to taxpayers.

[00:01:18]Unlike other seaweed, this is not edible. Not edible when it looks like this, no, but that could change and you'll see how before we're done here.

[00:01:27]At FIU, quiet work goes on in a food science lab that Local 10 got the chance to see.

[00:01:33]Okay. So, we use another technique called high-pressure processing, which is probably from food and beverage. You you might understand this cold-press thing. Headed up by Dr. Imran Ahmad and this question, what if this mess isn't really a mess at all? Dry it out, grind it up, and turn it into a powder and maybe one day it can be used as a thickening agent for food. So, me and my team, we were thinking about can we look into more detail, what are its components, and there might be something useful that we can utilize. So, that's how it started. So, we're in the student kitchen here at FIU. If the research and the trials go well, which could take a couple of years to perfect, that's for sure, what could the sargassum be used for? Well, it could go in ice cream because there's a material in the sargassum that's a thickening agent, and it could work in ice cream.

[00:02:27]The next step will be to create a a model food product where we can show that, okay, it has been used. Another step is to make sure they can strip the heavy metals out of it and any bacteria. So, this ocean oddball that looks like mostly water trash washing ashore may be carrying a second chance.

[00:02:52]We're live on the beach. Yes, so some exciting stuff going on at FIU. It's going to take a while to see if this will actually work. And what they do every morning, guys, quickly here, is they come and they clean it all up. So, it's actually gone now, but tomorrow morning it will be here as well. Other things this stuff could be used for as a thickening agent, maybe in orange juice, and also soups. So, Eric and Alexis, when you guys meet me here after the show, I'm going to have ice cream and a spot on the beach. I see three chairs right there. We are live on Hollywood Beach. Jeff Tavary, and Local 10 News.