Riding my bike into Somerset a few weeks ago, I nearly toppled over.As I came down Scaur Hill the sight of a thick brown blanket over Ely’s Harbour winded me. I thought I should stop and take a photo but in the rush that is the Christmas season, I decided to keep moving forward.Similar blankets took to waters and shores all over the Island. I understand that Shelly Bay has had Government crews removing it by the truckload for weeks.I don’t recall ever seeing so much seaweed on the beaches, although 30 years ago when I was young, we did have lots of it.My mother always swore by it for the garden and we would go to the beach where she would gather bags of it for her precious roses.At 78 she still sings its praises. Give her a bag when she’s out on her walk and she’ll collect some for the plants she smothers with love today.On the larger scale, many local farmers also tout the value of seaweed as a fertiliser. Roland (Junior) Hill of J & J Produce said he uses it as much as he can. And this season there’s a lot to be had.Bermudian Chris Flook one of the world’s leading scientists in sargassum, is Director of PEW Bermuda, an organisation dedicated to preservation of healthy ocean environments.“The amount of seaweed we’ve had this year has been very healthy,” he said. “It’s nothing to be concerned about.”Mr Flook confirmed that the seaweed, which is actually sargassum, is good for building and fertilising soil.“It’s quite good for your garden but it contains a lot of salt. It’s best to leave it out and let the rain wash it off before you put it in the garden,’ he said. “And don’t put it right on the tree, just on the outskirts,” he added.According to farmers I spoke with, seaweed is particularly well known for its benefits to banana crops.Commercial farmer Brian (Gabre) Swan said he’s seen banana trees fertilised with local seaweed produce bunches as tall as four feet. “And the hands were huge, like the size of Dole bananas,” he added.“I get it all the time,” said Mr Swan. “I have a big truck load of it now by one of my fields. It’s salty so I leave it to get washed by the rain and to dry out. I let it break down a bit and then I plough it into the entire field,” he said.Mr Hill said he tends to compost the seaweed he gets for most of his crops. “But I put it on the bananas right away,” he said. With so much available at the moment, he said he would put it directly in some fields.“I leave it in the truck and let the rain wash the salt out first,” he said. And then he ploughs it into fields that will lie fallow for at least six weeks.Tom Wadson said landscapers hired to clean some private properties asked if he wanted some seaweed.“I took a few truck loads,” he said. The seaweed was dumped on an area Mr Wadson keeps pigs on.“The pigs trample it all right into the ground,” he said, eliminating the need for him to plough with machinery.Although no one had a breakdown of the nutrients the seaweed brings to the soil the farmers said it’s good for everything they grow.“I don’t know exactly what’s in it but it makes everything nice and green and it keeps the pests down,” said Mr Hill. “I can tell you the snails don’t like it. I know it works. It works wonders.”Mr Hill is such a fervent believer in the richness seaweed brings to soil that he also imports a seaweed extract for use on his strawberry crops.“I find it makes them sweet, and green and healthy looking,” he said.But the challenge is getting the seaweed to the farms. Mr Swan confessed that he doesn’t like to fill his truck with it.“For me the salt is a real problem. It will rust up my truck. I will fill plastic bags with it, but it’s ideal if someone drops it off for me,” he said.And that’s happened. Westgate inmates out on work detail brought a truckload.And Parks Officer Craig Burt said his crews have been raking from north shore areas like Shelly Bay and Bailey’s Bay.He said much of that is used for composting done at the Botanical Gardens but with the high volume at the moment some is also given to local farmers who request it.Mr Swan said he has received a load from the Parks Department at one of his fields.Farmer Carlos Amaral said it wasn’t as easy for him as the heavy rains have meant the Government trucks cannot access the fields where he would use it.“It’s a shame,” he said, “ It’s just a logistical thing. I have been trying to get some but there have been problems physically transporting it.”He said the fields he has earmarked for the seaweed would see it ploughed in and left fallow for two to three months.Mr Hill will accept truckloads from Government and landscapers but he also collects it himself quite a bit.“I don’t like getting it with sand. I don’t like removing sand from the beach,” he said. “I like to get it right out of the water so that it’s clean. Hungry Bay and Devonshire Bay, where I can get the truck really close to the seaweed, are good collection areas for me,” he said.Collecting seaweed in the volume commercial farmers use, is hard work. “What used to be sweet were the days when Government would load the trucks up for us,” said Mr Hill.And it’s something government conservation services had considered last summer.Principal scientist Phillippe Rouja said the current volumes are higher than we’ve had in recent years but noted that it was not completely unexpected.“In the last two years the Caribbean has had huge swathes of it,” he said. “Even very far south in places where there is no recorded history of it, sargassum was showing up.“In Antigua resorts had to close this summer because they had eight feet washing up on shore,” he added.He said conservation services didn’t expect the blankets of sargassum from the West Indies to hit us here because we don’t get the trade winds.“Trade winds move in one direction but we’re just a dot in the ocean we don’t have regular winds,” he added.Yet in light of the volumes seen in the West Indies, Mr Rouja said a contingency plan was worked on for the Island.“We asked farmers if they would use it as we worked out an action plan just in case we were faced with eight feet of it on our beaches,” he said.Although well short of that, there’s still plenty around and Mr Burt and Mr Rouja said the public is allowed to take seaweed from public beaches for personal use.