Sargassum is destroying Mexico’s tourism economy. Could the monster seaweed do the same thing in the wider Caribbean? An Oct. 28 report in the Washington Post is worrying.
In the article — titled “Mexico deploys its navy to face its latest threat: Monster seaweed” — Joshua Partlow and Gabriela Martinez write, “From Barbados to Belize, and Cancun to Tulum, a brown seaweed known as sargassum has invaded the Caribbean basin this year.”
The writers warn, “Vast floating mats have washed up and buried beaches. The piles of seaweed grew more than four feet high in Antigua and forced some people to abandon their homes.”
In Tobago, meanwhile, “The legislature declared a natural disaster last month, as the stench of decomposing seaweed, and the dead fish and turtles caught within it, caused nausea among tourists.”
In fact, Hilary Beckles, the vice chancellor of the University of the West Indies, called the phenomenon “the greatest single threat to the Caribbean economy I can imagine.”
Tourism threat
Mexico’s Caribbean coastline attracts 10 million visitors each year. It generates $8 billion in tourism-related revenue annually. In that country, the sargassum problem is considered a cabinet-level crisis, and the country’s tourism and environmental ministers have called it “a calamity.”
José Eduardo Mariscal de la Selva is the director general of Cancun’s maritime department. He received a photo one morning in July from his beach cleaners showing the extent of the weed on the white sands, and he assumed it was a joke. He only understood the real extent of the disaster when he saw the beach with his own eyes.
“Beaches are what Mexico sells to the world,” he reportedly stated. “Hotel guests who pay $500 a night do not want to open the shades to find paradise matted down under layers of stinking, fly-infested algae.”
Cleaning up
The Post reported that since the July invasion, Mexico has launched a herculean cleanup effort. Along the coast of Quintana Roo state, the government hired 5,000 day-labourers in four-hour shifts to rake seaweed from more than 100 miles of beach.
From one popular stretch of Cancun, workers hauled off half a million cubic feet of seaweed — more than 1,000 truckloads. The federal government has budgeted $9 million dollars so far to remove the stinky mess, and hotels are expected to pay millions per month for further maintenance.
The Mexican navy has also deployed its oceanographers to study the seaweed.
Rear Admiral Fernando Alfonso Angli Rodriguez reportedly stated that there were proposals to buy boats and floating barriers to block the seaweed before it reached beaches. He further described how the Mexican navy is currently testing a hydraulic suck-pump that has been used in the Dominican Republic.
“The best way to collect sargassum is in the sea, before it sinks,” said the Mexican navy’s director general for oceanography.
Unprecedented influx
The Post explained that this type of algae is not new to these parts. Christopher Columbus noted its abundance, and it is how the Sargasso Sea, in the north Atlantic, got its name.
In the past, however, it wasn’t seen as much of a nuisance, as it provides a floating habitat for turtles, fish and birds. But spikes in the growth of sargassum were recorded starting about five years ago.
This year’s bloom has baffled seaweed scientists.
Chuanmin Hu, a professor of optical oceanography at the University of South Florida, tracks the sargassum by satellite. He said that the summer of 2015 showed the largest coverage in history. He calculated that there were 12,300 square miles of sargassum this July, about the size of Maryland, compared with 2,300 square miles four years earlier.
“It’s in the entire tropical Atlantic,” Mr. Hu reportedly said. “It’s amazing.”
Scientists have offered different theories to explain the anomaly, from climate change that has shifted ocean currents to increased runoff from farms in the Amazon into the ocean.
“What caused this?” Mr. Hu asked. “That is still a mystery.”
The lesson for the Virgin Islands in the sargassum saga is not to take the monster for granted, even though the country has not seen a crisis such as Mexico’s.
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