Here I want to share something that I’ve been working closely for almost 2 year now. I don’t know how many of us really know that in our beautiful country, we actually cultivating seaweed in our beautiful sea in Sabah. Well, why only in Sabah? Actually, the answer is the quality of the water in Sabah water is much higher and better as compare to peninsular.
Seaweed are ecological important because they assist in supplying oxygen to the sea act as the primary producers in the marine food chain. Some seaweed has the capacity to remove heavy metals from the water and can potentially be used in biomonitoring and in the bioremediation of such pollutants. Seaweeds also possess excellent survival strategies to withstand many environmental stresses that they are exposed to.
The common types seaweed that being cultivate in Sabah is from type of red seaweed or also known as Rhodophyta. It is known as Eucheuma cottonii or kappaphycus alvarezii. It has been widely cultivate due to its kappa-carrageenan content and is highly demand on world market due to its diverse product application.
From my own experience being at the seaweed cultivation side is that, although seaweed is an important marine commodity to our country, but we must also look at the environmental issues that rise from it. One of the issues that being debate is the cultivation method that being applied currently by the farmer should be improves. Existing method that is highly practice is by using tie-tie. Tie-tie is a method of using raffia to tie the seaweed and empty mineral bottles as a float so that the seaweed will be at the water surface and grow faster. The disadvantages of using this method is after few months the empty bottle will be broken down and float around resulting pollution as well as damage the coral. So, a better cultivation methods needed to replace the current practice.
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