(10 May 2019) Tourists looking for sun and sand in Mexican resorts like Cancun, Playa del Carmen and Tulum have been disgusted by foul-smelling mounds of sargassum, a seaweed-like algae, piling up on beaches and turning turquoise waters brown, and experts are warning that it may be the new normal.
The Caribbean Riviera Maya coast provides half of Mexico's tourism revenues and very little sargassum reached it prior to 2014. But a possible combination of climate change, pollution from fertilizers and ocean flows and currents carrying the algae mats to the Caribbean has caused the problem to explode.
"We are having the problem in the northern coast of Quintana Roo, where it is more noticeable because it's where most people live, and where most activities are happening," said Gonzalo Merediz, director of 'Friends of Sian Ka'an', an organization dedicated to environmental conservation and sustainable development in Mexico's resort-studded coastal state of Quintana Roo.
"We are having the problem in the entire coast of Quintana Roo, as it is also happening in Central America and many islands of the Caribbean," he added.
While tourist arrivals at the Cancun airport were up 3.3% in March over the same month last year, many fear this will not last long with the sargassum befouling white sand beaches and blue waters, as well as the air, sargassum decomposes with a rotten egg smell.
Tourists come to Mexico's Caribbean coast for the sun, sand, snorkeling and turquoise waters. While there are a lot of other things to do on the coast like visiting sinkhole lakes known as cenotes, Mayan ruins and the jungle, the beach remains the prize attraction, around which almost all the tourism infrastructure is centered.
And tourists such Gustav, visiting from Calgary, Canada, are unlikely to accept brown, algae-filled water.
"You can't really swim here, you can't really spend any time in the water," he said.
"It looks dirty, and it is something that I wouldn't even risk my own health for."
The algae flooding into the Caribbean is coming from an unexpected source: the tropical Atlantic waters beyond the mouth of the Amazon River.
Scientists have set up sargassum tracking systems that detect the amount of algae heading for shores in the Caribbean, but it's hard to predict when or where it will land.
As it decays and sinks to the bottom, it can also smother the coral the Caribbean is known for, and accumulations on beaches can make it harder for sea turtles to nest.
Extracting it at sea risks the species that use the floating mats as cover for their young. But shoveling or bulldozing up sargassum once it washes up on shore is also a Herculean task that raises other concerns, such as where to dump it.
Merediz points out that nutrients from the seaweed extracted from the ocean can filter down and affect the aquifers, "so we have to be very careful on where we put this material that is extracted."
But not all tourists are discouraged by the seaweed covered beaches, and are still in awe of the Caribbean coasts.
"I wouldn't affect us coming back here, even on this time of the year," said British tourist Bryiant James Howell while taking a stroll with his wife on the white sands of a Cancun beach.
"Everything else is lovely, everything else is great, so we just put up with it."
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