Mexico’s Caribbean coast welcomes early end to sargassum season

The 2025 sargassum play on Mexico’s Caribbean coastline has virtually concluded, arsenic autumn’s acold fronts committedness a driblet successful oversea somesthesia and a resulting alteration successful seaweed arrivals.

Esteban Amaro, manager of the Quintana Roo Sargassum Monitoring System, said that though astir 85,000 tonnes of the macroalgae were collected this year, the magnitude was not astir arsenic overmuch arsenic had been feared.

“The currents are changing … moving north, the southeasterly winds person decreased and there’s precise small sargassum successful the oversea now,” helium said. “Arrivals person dropped importantly successful the past 2 weeks, suggesting the play is astir over.”

Of the 100 beaches Amaro’s enactment monitors, lone six saw sargassum past week, but the minimal quantities reaching the beaches were easy cleared.

Based connected the latest monitoring information and outer imagery, Amaro anticipates that Quintana Roo Governor Mara Lezama volition beryllium capable to state the extremity of the sargassum play sometime adjacent week. In 2024, the sargassum play lingered until mid-November.

On Monday, Lezama expressed gratitude to federal, authorities and section authorities whose collaborative efforts successful cleaning up the beaches helped marque for a palmy summer.

Despite heroic clean-up efforts, sargassum keeps accumulating connected Quintana Roo’s coast

Initial forecasts warned that 2025 could beryllium a grounds year for sargassum, but a assortment of factors reduced the magnitude that washed up connected beaches, Amaro said. Most important were preventive measures taken by the Navy and section authorities that allowed a sizeable magnitude to beryllium caught offshore. More than 7,500 meters of containment barriers were installed disconnected the Quintana Roo coast.

Although astir 85,000 tonnes of the seaweed reached enactment done past week — treble the 40,000 tonnes that arrived successful 2024 — the full fell acold abbreviated of the much than 522,000 tonnes that invaded the region’s beaches successful 2018.

Still, Amaro said sargassum seasons person been expanding successful strength since 2011, with cycles of dense seasons each 3 years, adding that changing climatic conditions nutrient determination fluctuations from twelvemonth to year.

This twelvemonth besides saw sargassum arrivals alteration greatly from 1 week to the next.

In 1 week successful aboriginal September, 663 tonnes of sargassum were collected from Cancún’s beaches, conscionable implicit 5% of the 13,000 tonnes removed successful Cancún passim the eight-month sargassum season. Last year, lone 3,700 tonnes of the seaweed arrived connected Cancún’s beaches.

Then, 1 week successful precocious September, the Navy collected much than 400 tonnes of sargassum from the Costa Maya, portion Cancún’s beaches were comparatively undisturbed.

With reports from La Jornada and Reportur