Seaweed in the Caribbean and Mexico – Sargassum

While there has been a higher than normal amount of seaweed washing ashore on some Caribbean and Mexican beaches, not all are impacted and local authorities are taking steps to remedy the situation. At True Vacation Travel we value your vacation abroad. We are monitoring this situation and keep our clients aware of how this may impact their travel. If you have specific concerns, please bring them up to your travel professional.

The following is some factual information for you to be informed about sargassum:

• Large amounts of sargassum – a type of brownish seaweed that is neither harmful or dangerous – have been washing ashore throughout parts of the Caribbean and Mexico; it has impacted beaches from the Dominican Republic in the north, to Barbados in the east, and Mexico’s Caribbean resorts to the west.
• According to the Associated Press (AP), Sargassum is “generally blooms in the Sargasso Sea, a roughly 2 million-square-mile (about 5 million-square-kilometer) body of warm water in the North Atlantic that is a major habitat and nursery for numerous marine species.”
• Sargassum is commonly seen on many beaches of the northern Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic coast of the U.S., according to a report by Riviera Maya News. But in 2011 it began appearing in places where it was not common, possibly because of higher temperatures and less wind.
• Travel Weekly reports “This summer’s invasion of sargassum, a vine-like type of floating seaweed, stretches from the beaches of Palm Beach County and Key West in Florida as far south as Tulum on Mexico’s Riviera Maya. The east and south coasts of Barbados, the Dominican Republic, Tobago and Cancun have been particularly hard hit, but other islands, too, have battled the invasion.”
• “Mexican authorities recently said they will spend about $9.1 million and hire 4,600 temporary workers to clean up seaweed mounds accumulating along that country’s Caribbean coast. Part of the money will be used to test whether the sargassum can be collected at sea before it reaches shore,” reports the AP.
• Also according to Travel Weekly, “The Cancun government in collaboration with local hotels established a cleaning program that enables 85% of the beaches to remain free of excessive sargassum. Close to 50% of Cancun’s beaches face Isla Mujeres, which acts as a protective barrier against currents the seaweed carries in.”
• Caribbean News Now reports that the “Caribbean Tourism Organisation (CTO) on [August 11, 2015] described sargassum – which has been invading Caribbean beaches recently – as an ‘unwelcome visitor’ … and “it was treating the matter seriously and with urgency and has engaged regional and international institutions to find solutions.”

Travelers should be aware that the issue differs significantly from country to country and beach to beach. According to the CTO, “Even in destinations which are at risk, not all beaches have been affected; in some cases it’s just on the windward coast and not the leeward.”