From Plant Press, Vol. 10, No. 3 from July 2007.
Diane and Mark Littler and Barrett Brooks have recently published an online seaweed flora (more than 100 species) of SabaIsland available at <http://sweetgum.nybg.org/saba/algae.html>.
Users can search for any combination of phylum, family, genus, species, infra-specific rank, author, collector, collector number and precise location as a satellite map with longitude and latitude. Searching for a given parameter generates information associated with the specimens collected by the project under that parameter. Images of photos of living plants in situ from the field are attached at the bottom of the label data.
SabaIsland, southeast of Puerto Rico, is one of the Windward Islands of the Netherlands Antilles. Because there is little room for agriculture on the island’s 5 square miles, the 1,500 islanders rely mainly on income from tourists that come to scuba dive. The Saban fishing community also generates a significant income from fishing nearby Saba Bank.
In response to rising concerns about oil tanker traffic and anchoring, Conservation International, in conjunction with the Netherland Antilles Department of the Environment and Nature, as well as local concerned groups and a total of 12 marine scientists, initiated an investigation of Saba Bank, a massive undersea mountain. Encircled by about 85 square miles of actively growing coral reefs, Saba Bank is the third largest atoll and, until the January 2006 expedition, was one of the least-explored places on the planet. Saba Bank was threatened by the bustling oil trans-shipment depot on nearby St. EustatiusIsland. Supertankers stop there to transfer oil to smaller ships that can enter countries without deep-water ports. Rather than pay minimal mooring fees at St. Eustatius, tankers drop anchor for free just a few miles away at Saba Bank.
The Littler team found Saba Bank to be by far the richest location for seaweed diversity thus far discovered in the Caribbean – a distinction they formerly attributed to Diamond Rock off the coast of Martinique. Many new species of seaweed were discovered around the atoll, including an abundance of several commercially valuable species – precisely what the conservation groups were hoping for. This is particularly significant for a community looking to diversify its economy. The data collected from the 2-week expedition will strengthen the small island community’s petition for international protection as a Particularly Sensitive Sea Area by the International Maritime Organization.