Officials in Riviera Maya, Mexico, have been forced to get an early start on efforts to remove annoying and costly sargassum seaweed from popular beaches.
According to Riviera Maya News, several stretches of coastline, including tourist hotspots such as Cancun, Playa del Carmen and Tulum, have been impacted by the unwelcome brown macroalgae to start the year, with strong winds fueling the out-of-season arrival.
A relatively minimal four tons was collected between Playa del Niño and Playa Perla, according to Arturo Quintero, the Director of Pozos y Limpieza de Playas in Cancun, with authorities in Isla Mujeres recently removing some 220 tons of seaweed.
"With a quick response and coordinated work, we removed all the sargassum in a few hours so that Playa Norte, a multi-award-winning beach considered one of the best in the world, retains its unparalleled beauty," Dayana Pérez Medina, who heads Zofemat (the Federal Maritime Terrestrial Zone) of Isla Mujeres, told the news outlet.
In addition to rapid clean-up efforts, the Mexican Navy intends to add another 1,640 to 1,968 feet of anti-sargassum barriers off the coast for 2026.
"We are addressing this atypical influx with atypical actions," said Commander Marco Muñoz Hernández, according to Riviera Maya News. "Since Friday, in coordination with the municipal and state governments, we established an emergency cleanup operation on the beaches while we finished deploying the barriers that were under maintenance."
"The same length of barriers will be reinstalled for the time being, although the intention is to extend them another 500 to 600 meters further south."
Efforts to keep the destination's popular beaches free of sargassum will be ongoing as experts at the University of Florida have identified seven million tons of sargassum moving from Africa toward the Gulf of Mexico.
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