Due to the strong east-to-west flowing winds, the monitoring network is anticipating that this mass of 5,000 km2 (3,100 mi2) will hit the waters of the Mexican Caribbean in the coming weeks. They expect that the mass will arrive in waves hitting mainly in the Southern Zone of the State, in about two weeks.

Join or FB Seaweed Reporting Groups:

• Mexico Sargassum Seaweed Updates (Cancun, PDC, Tulum, etc.)
• Dominican Republic Sargassum Seaweed Reports (Punta Cana, Cabarete, etc.)
• Sargassum Seaweed in Caribbean | Monitoring and Daily Updates
• Sargassum Seaweed Florida: Daily Updates and Photo Reports

This comes after approximately 135 tons were expected to wash ashore on the tranquil waters of the Mexican Caribbean in mid-April. In total, this year there is expected to be between 200 and 300 thousand tons of sargassum washing on the coasts of the Mexican Caribbean according to the Sargassum Monitoring Network.

The rotting, stinking algae is composed of gas-filled structures that keep the brown seaweed buoyant and make its way to all Caribbean islands, the Gulf of Mexico, and Southeast Florida. When washing ashore, not only does it stink, but it is not advised to swim next to it as it can cause the skin to turn red and into an itchy rash.

While it is harmful to humans, the seaweed helps with shoreline stability and is home to many marine species and the algae helps with erosion and provides beach plants with nutrients.

Along with the Mexican Caribbean, the massive amounts of sargassum have impacted other destinations in the Caribbean region, such as the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, and even the Florida Peninsula.

In the Dominican Republic, hoteliers and local authorities are cleaning beaches every morning and installing ocean barriers as sargassum peaks between May and August on the country’s shores.

The post Seaweed Alert: 5,000 Square Kilometers Of Sargassum Heading To Mexican Caribbean appeared first on Traveling Lifestyle.

Also known as the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt, the Sargasso Sea is an extensive area of around 1,100 kilometers (600 nautical miles) wide and 3,200 km (1,750 nmi) long in the Atlantic Ocean.

It’s considered the largest seaweed mass on the planet and shares borders with no countries. 

Despite its calm blue waters, there have been reports of ships getting trapped in this vegetal blob when winds are strong.

In “normal” environmental conditions, the Sargasso Sea is an important marine ecosystem, key in the migration of multiple European and American species like the European eel, the American eel, and the American conger eel.

Other species, such as certain types of fish, sea turtles and crustaceans, use this “golden island” to reproduce or protect themselves from natural predators.

In an attempt to promote the creation of a “global network of marine sanctuaries under the Global Ocean Treaty,” Greenpeace found a “shocking” amount of plastic garbage in some sargassum beds when navigating the area.

In one of the floating mats, they “retrieved more than 300 pieces of plastic in just 30 minutes including bottle caps, disposable lighters, buoys, shoes, children’s toys and dozens of smaller scraps in the process of breaking down into microplastics,” reads a Greenpeace statement. 

“We saw large pieces of plastic debris tangled inside it. On closer inspection, every clump of seaweed contained a panoply of plastic pollution, from bottle caps to disposable cutlery,” stated Briony Venn, oceans campaigner for Greenpeace UK.

The main objective of this environmental organization is to press the UK government to ratify the Global Ocean Treaty and to join forces with other international governments to elect the Sargasso Sea as the first sea sanctuary in international waters.

This effort should go together with reducing single-use plastic under the Global Plastic Treaty, as per the organization.

According to scientists, plastic is now present in all oceans on the planet. This material has been found in the bodies of “44% of all seabird species, 22% of cetacean species, and in all sea turtle species,” Greenpeace says.

The post Greenpeace Finds Shocking Quantities Of Plastic In The Sargasso Sea appeared first on Traveling Lifestyle.

For all these years, this harmless algae used to provide shelter and food for marine species. But not anymore.

Over the last decade, this seaweed has been growing uncontrollably, massively arriving at coasts all the way from West Africa up to South Florida, passing from all countries surrounded by Caribbean waters, including Mexico.  

In Quintana Roo alone, authorities have collected over 200 tons of sargassum in the last 4 years, according to Huguette Hernández Gómez, Secretary of Ecology and Environment of the State. In other words, a total nightmare.

According to experts, sargassum is posing a marine risk never seen before. The worst part is that they don’t really know what exactly is causing this phenomenon or how to mitigate it.

Among other things, sargassum forms a barrier that blocks sunlight preventing marine organisms from carrying out photosynthesis. 

In a 2021 study published by Climate Change Ecology, sargassum beds were found guilty of decreasing sunlight entry by 73% and increasing water temperature by 41°F.

Sargassum “mainly affects species that cannot move or move very little, such as starfish, sea urchins, seagrasses and, of course, corals,” reported the biologist María García Rivas, Director of Puerto Morelos National Reef Park. 

Another study published by Marine Pollution Bulletin analyzed the damage caused by the rotting of the algae on Mexican Caribbean beaches in 2018, in which creatures from 78 species died, especially crustaceans and demersal and neritic fish that live on the seabed.

Still, the worst impacted species is the Great Mayan Reef, the second largest in the world, comprising Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras, because it’s being “suffocated” by massive amounts of sargassum.

In Colombia, the mountains of sargassum accumulated in key protected islands are preventing sea tortures from reaching the sea before being depredated.  

“We observed that baby turtles had problems crossing the sargassum barrier and were vulnerable to predation by ghost crabs, rats and other predators,” informed Briggite Gavio, a marine biology professor at the National University of Colombia.

Academic pairs in Antigua and Barbuda and Florida have reported the same issue.

In countries like Belize, sargassum is sweeping along marine litter, suffocating multiple organisms and making the environment toxic in the process, says James Foley, oceans director at Nature Conservancy.

Last but not least, Sargassum also appears to be killing Caribbean mangroves, which are saltwater trees that defend coastlines from extreme hurricanes. 

These organisms live in the seashore but their roots need oxygen to survive. The problem is that sargassum is acting as an oil spill, suffocating its roots, says Camilo Trench, a Jamaican marine biologist at the University of the West Indies (UWI).

Costs for the Tourism Industry and Governments 

Being Mexico one of the most visited countries in the world, it’s also the one paying the highest price. Tourism reduces but expenses skyrocket. 

In 2023, Mexico’s Navy Secretariat spent $3 million collecting seaweed, purchasing sargasero ships and installing anti-sargassum barriers.

The Federal Maritime Terrestrial Zone spent $7 million doing the same and Quintana Roo’s government spent $1.7 million to combat sargassum.

For their part, resort managers have spent thousands of dollars hiring cleaning personnel to keep beaches acceptable for beachgoers. 

In 2024, spending is expected to be similar.

Seaweed video report from Playacar, Mexico:

The post Decade of Sargassum: How’s Brown Algae Damaging Caribbean Ecosystems and Tourism appeared first on Traveling Lifestyle.

“You can’t swim. Boats are stuck. Rocks are buried. There is no human force that can handle this sargassum,” said @chachorivera in a viral YouTube video last week.

A short version of that video has over 1.6 million views on his TikTok account.

The YouTuber explains that the biggest arrival of seaweed is concentrated in the center of Playa del Carmen and that other beaches in the municipality are almost clean, like Playa Mamita.

In the footage, workers are operating heavy machinery to collect algae. But there are so many tons of organic material that those efforts look pointless.

“Hoteliers only want to profit from the beaches, but they do not invest to solve the problem,” a user lamented.

But the thing is that they do. Some resorts have even hired hundreds of workers to keep their own beaches clean.

“Some hotels have up to 300 employees ready to collect sargassum, depending on the resort’s size, because there are some with very large beach fronts,” said Jesús Almaguer Salazar, President of the Hotel Association of Cancun, Puerto Morelos and Isla Mujeres.

For their part, national and local authorities have invested millions in new “sargasero” vessels, ocean barriers and heavy machinery to collect sargasum in the open sea as well as on the beach.

The Navy Region is “installing up to 8,600 meters of anti-sargassum barriers. This reinforces the labor of 22 small boats, an ocean vessel, four beach sweepers, 11 algae collectors, and eight amphibious bands to control sargassum in 2024.”

Another Facebook user reports a worrisome situation in Playacar, where waters look absolutely brown and uninviting.

“…And this is just two km up towards the ferry pier at Playacar beach as well – Impossible to enter the water last two days and it’s piling up – maybe less cleaning going on the weekend ..,” Nora K.

The hard truth is that sargassum is increasingly becoming an uncontrollable issue. Its arrival is impacting marine life and tourism from West Africa to South Florida.

The tourism sector is being heavily impacted because sargassum makes aquatic activities difficult or impossible. Let alone that, when it decomposes, it releases hydrogen sulfide gas that smells like rotten eggs.

Marsh’s team, some researchers from the University of York, the West Indies, and Ghana have created SARTRAC, a multidisciplinary team to forecast and monitor sargassum.

According to these experts, by 2050, sea waters would be too hot for sargassum to survive in the Atlantic Ocean, so it might start invading the coasts of Portugal and the Canary Islands in Spain.

The post Shocking Videos Of Sargassum Invading This Popular Mexican Beach Town Go Viral appeared first on Traveling Lifestyle.