The nightmare has returned to the Mexican Caribbean as the beaches of tourist centers such as Cancún, Playa del Carmen, Puerto Morelos, and Tulum are now filled with high volumes of sargassum, which has turned their crystal blue waters into a brown muck of seaweed.
However, this problem is not unique to Mexico. According to the Cancún Sargassum Monitoring Network, the plague has affected 30 countries and territories in the Caribbean. Cases have been reported in the shores of Cuba, the Turks and Caicos islands, Inagua, the Bahamas, Jamaica, Grand Caiman, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras.
The list also mentioned the Lesser Antilles, as well as the Florida Peninsula in the United States.
Following a report issued earlier in the weak, coastal authorities expect more sargassum to arrive in the Puerto Morelos, Solidaridad, Cozumel, Tulum, and Felipe Carrillo Puerto municipalities, as well as the coastal areas of Bacalar and Othón P. Blanco.
Cancún mayor “Mara” Lezama has acknowledged the seriousness of the issue since the volumes of macro-algae have been arriving at a high speed. “The shores started filling up with sargassum in a matter of hours,” she stated, adding that no federal resources had been allocated to deal with the problem.
At the local level, the city council has cleaned the beaches with resources from the
Federal Terrestrial Maritime Zone, which correspond to the vigilance and sanitation of the shoreline.
The
governor of Quintana Roo, Carlos Joaquín González, has expressed in different forums with members of the
Ministry of Tourism (SECTUR) and the
Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT), that the sargassum plague should be made a priority of the federal government.
The state government requested
MXN$405 million to implement a comprehensive strategy to remove the incoming sargassum before it reaches the shore. So far, there has been no response from federal authorities.
Two days ago,
Roberto Cintrón, the chairman of the Cancún and Puerto Morelos Hotels Association, in company of Coparmex directors and members of the
Vacationer Clubs Association (Acluyac) went to the Mexican senate to request support from the federal government and call for funds to deal with the sargassum plague.
According to Cintrón, tourism has seen a 20% drop this year due to the “sargassum nightmare.”
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