While Covid-19 constraints did not impact fieldwork they altered the approach to meetings and workshops. The inception workshop was held partially online and the validation workshop fully online. No hands-on technical workshops were feasible, so technical information was distributed via short publications with links instead. Face-to-face meetings were reduced, so phone and online interviews with personnel at the key agencies substituted. These less interactive methods were time-consuming, especially as senior officials were preoccupied with Covid-19 and hard to reach, but the outputs were the same as originally intended.

The main lesson learned, covering all of the above, is that an adaptive approach to planning worked. In discussion it also seemed that mainly reactive, rather than proactive, sargassum management was likely to persist in the short-term unless guidance was provided to make adaptation more strategic and adaptive.