Over the past few days, several TikTokers, YouTubers, and Facebook users have been sharing posts on their social media platforms shocking videos of alarming amounts of sargassum on the beaches and waters of Playa del Carmen.
‘You can’t swim. Boats are stuck. Rocks are buried. There is no human power that can handle this sargassum,” said @chachorivera in one viral YouTube video from last week.
A short version of that video has been released 1.6 million views on his TikTok account.
The YouTuber explains that the largest supply of seaweed is concentrated in the center of Playa del Carmen and that other beaches in the municipality are almost clean, such as Playa Mamita.
In the footage, workers operate heavy machinery to collect algae. But there are so many tons of organic material that those efforts seem pointless.
“Hoteliers only want to benefit from the beaches, but do not invest to solve the problem,” one user complained.
But the thing is, they do. Some resorts have even hired hundreds workers to keep their own beaches clean.
“Some hotels have as many as 300 staff ready to pick up sargassum depending on the size of the resort, as some have very large beach fronts,” said Jesús Almaguer Salazar, president of the Hotel Association of Cancun, Puerto Morelos and Isla Mujeres.
National and local governments, in turn, have invested millions in new onessargaseroships, ocean barriers and heavy machinery to collect sargasum both on the open sea and on the beach.
The marine region does “installing up to 8,600 meters of anti-sargassum barriers. This reinforces the deployment of 22 small boats, one seagoing vessel, four beach sweepers, eleven algae collectors and eight amphibious gangs to control sargassum by 2024.”
Another Facebook user reports a worrying situation Playacarwhere the water looks absolutely brown and uninviting.
“…And this is also only two kilometers towards the ferry pier on Playacar beach – It has been impossible to get into the water for the last two days and it is piling up – maybe there will be less cleaning at 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 hit hard because sargassum makes water activities difficult or impossible. Never mind that decomposition releases hydrogen sulfide gas that smells like rotten eggs.
Marsh’s team has created some researchers from the University of York, the West Indies and Ghana SARTRACa multidisciplinary team to predict and monitor sargassum.
According to these experts by 2050, sea waters could be too hot for sargassum to survive in the Atlantic Ocean, allowing it to enter the coasts of Portugal and Spain’s Canary Islands.
