‘El Niño is already here’

Wilfred Luiramo walks to the coast every morning to check the seaweed stakes in the shallows. He wades in, clearing the overnight debris, checking each line with his hands, slowly and methodically. But he has to wait: it has rained non-stop for the past few days.

Luiramo owns Haleta Seaweed, a local enterprise in Solomon Islands’ Western Province that provides employment for many families. “The weather pattern keeps changing and it’s impossible to predict,” he said. “Today it will rain, tomorrow it’s sunny, and it keeps changing all the time.”

El Niño has brought strong winds and continuous rain. Seaweed farming is highly sensitive to these shifts: growth depends on suitable temperatures, salinity, currents, and tides.

“Sometimes, we do not have sunlight for the whole week,” Luiramo said. “When there is constant rainfall, the seaweed cannot dry because we use sunlight to dry the products. When the seaweed products are slow to dry, we cannot package and sell them. This affects the income of everyone in the community.”

Weather variability is not the only pressure Luiramo’s community has faced. In April, Tropical Cyclone Maila destroyed every seaweed farm in the community, he said. More recently, the low-tide period has extended well beyond its usual window.

“The normal low tide period is around June,” Luiramo said. “But for this year, we still experience low tide from June, July, and August.”

“El Niño is already here,” he said, “and we need to quickly adapt.”