{"id":7887,"date":"2022-08-30T09:57:26","date_gmt":"2022-08-30T13:57:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/?p=7887"},"modified":"2022-08-31T10:05:47","modified_gmt":"2022-08-31T14:05:47","slug":"on-mexicos-caribbean-coast-mountains-of-seaweed-grow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/?p=7887","title":{"rendered":"On Mexico\u2019s Caribbean Coast, Mountains of Seaweed Grow"},"content":{"rendered":"
Workers who were hired by residents remove sargassum seaweed from the Bay of Soliman, north of Tulum, Quintana Roo state, Mexico, Wednesday, Aug. 3, 2022. (AP Photo\/Eduardo Verdugo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Scraping the smelly sargassum seaweed off some beaches on Mexico\u2019s resort-studded Caribbean coast has become not only a nightmare, but possibly a health threat, for the workers doing it \u2014 with the quantities washing ashore this year seemingly mountains not mounds.<\/p>\n

Decomposing sargassum, which is actually algae, generates hydrogen sulfide gas. In small amounts in open areas, it\u2019s not much more than an annoying odor: sulfurous, like rotting eggs.<\/p>\n

But in the quantities seen in once-paradisical beach towns like Playa del Carmen, Tulum, and Xcalak, scientists say it can be dangerous to workers with respiratory problems as they rake up the seaweed maskless in the scorching heat. This year appears on track to be worse than even the peak sargassum year of 2018.<\/p>\n

Ezequiel Mart\u00ednez Lara is one of thousands of laborers who work six to eight hours per day heaving mounds of sargassum into wheelbarrows with pitchforks and then wheeling them off the beach to a growing pile on a neighboring street.<\/p>\n

Mart\u00ednez Lara used to earn as much as $50 per day guiding sports fishermen on catch-and-release outings, but now makes less than half that for collecting around 40 wheelbarrows of sargassum every day.<\/p>\n

It is a Sisyphean task at a beach north of Tulum, where huge mats of seaweed float just offshore.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we clean it all off today, tomorrow more will have washed in,\u201d said another worker, Austin Valle.<\/p>\n

But workers like Mart\u00ednez and Valle are exposing themselves to more than just the burning sun, says Rosa Rodr\u00edguez Mart\u00ednez, a biologist in the beachside town of Puerto Morelos who studies reefs and coastal ecosystems for Mexico\u2019s National Autonomous University.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the university we have started to measure the quantity of gases that sargassum produces when it is scraped up,\u201d Rodr\u00edguez Mart\u00ednez said. \u201cAt one spot (in a decomposed pile of seaweed) it reached 56 parts per million. That\u2019s very high. Above two, that can be dangerous for people with respiratory problems.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI took off running\u201d from the spot, she said.<\/p>\n

Mart\u00ednez Lara doesn\u2019t have the luxury of avoiding the hydrogen sulfide gas. Like almost every other sargassum worker on the coast, he has no mask, gas sensor or medical care. He works at a day rate for the person who owns the house in front of the beach.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen sargassum rots, it gives off a very strong odor like acid, and it is very bothersome when you breath it; it hurts a lot,\u201d Mart\u00ednez Lara said. He said he takes more simple precautions.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe try to clean it off (the beach) as quickly as possible … to get it off when it is as fresh as possible,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

A 2019 article in the Journal of Travel Medicine includes the disturbing warning, \u201cMore chronic exposure to these gasses can lead to conjunctival and neurocognitive symptoms such as memory loss and impaired balance, as well as non-specific symptoms such as headache, nausea and fatigue.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Florida Health Department, on the other hand, says \u201chydrogen sulfide levels in an area like the beach, where large amounts of air flow can dilute levels, is not expected to harm health.\u201d<\/p>\n

The sargassum problem isn\u2019t as bad for tourists as for workers. But neither is it pleasant.<\/p>\n

Ligia Collado-Vides, a marine botanist at Florida International University who specializes in studying macroalgae like sargassum, said, \u201cIf you\u2019re swimming for a little bit, it shouldn\u2019t be a danger at all,\u201d but added that tiny jellyfish cousins known as hydrozoa often inhabit sargassum mats.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re going to be there for a long time playing in the sargassum, you can get like many, many, many stings from hydrozoans and those are toxic,\u201d she noted, adding that long sleeves \u2014 something almost nobody wears at the beach \u2014 might help.<\/p>\n

Sarah Callaway, a tourist from Denver, Colorado, was pretty much confined to playing with her kids in the pool in front of their rented beach house.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe property is beautiful, but we were automatically struck … by the smell,\u201d Callaway said. \u201cThe smell is really pungent and very strong. And then, yeah, we were disappointed with how much seaweed sargasso there is here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe kids have tried to get in the ocean, but then they get kind of overwhelmed by it. So we really haven\u2019t gotten to do the beach part of it, which is why we came,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

It will also impact locals who depend on the tourist trade. Hundreds of thousands of people migrated to the coast in recent years for better paying jobs, but some may now be considering leaving.<\/p>\n

Valle, the seaweed cleaner, said one of his friends in Tulum has been thinking of giving up her snack stand business because sales have dipped so much.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to measure the impact on tourism. The Caribbean coast suffered a drop in visits during the coronavirus pandemic, but because Mexico never declared travel restrictions, testing requirements or mandatory mask rules, Americans have continued to come.<\/p>\n

International tourism to the country as a whole surpassed pre-pandemic levels in the first half of 2022, with 10.26 million visitors from January to June, 1.5% higher than the 10.11 million tourists who arrived in Mexico in the first half of 2019.<\/p>\n

Mexico\u2019s strongest showing was with U.S. tourists. The number of Americans arriving by air in the first six months of 2022 was 6.66 million; that is 19.1% higher than in the same period of 2019.<\/p>\n

But that boom may be slowing. Grupo Financiero Base noted in a research report that international tourist arrivals in June 2022 were down 13.8% from levels in June 2019. It\u2019s unclear what \u2014 sargassum, inflation, or the war in Ukraine \u2014 may have caused that dip.<\/p>\n

And overall tourist spending remains below pre-pandemic levels.<\/p>\n

The picture is mixed because some of the most-heavily developed resorts like Cancun have not suffered as much from sargassum as lower-key resorts further south, like Playa del Carmen and Tulum.<\/p>\n

Ocean currents and islands like Isla Mujeres shield Cancun from much of the floating sargassum. Given the large number of big hotels in Cancun with huge cleaning staffs and money to deploy floating booms, what sargassum does arrive is cleaned up more quickly.<\/p>\n

The jury is still out on the floating booms, meant to trap sargassum mats at sea before they reach the beach.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the sea is calm, all types of booms work,\u201d Rodr\u00edguez Mart\u00ednez said. \u201cWhen there are waves, none of them work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some tourists like the area so much they\u2019ll keep coming back.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will absolutely be back. We love it here,\u201d said Jeff Chambers, a tourist from Palm Desert, California, who was strolling down the main seaside street in Tulum. \u201cWe like things a little slower.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some locals like Victor Reyes, who works in real estate in Tulum, are more sanguine about the seaweed, noting that it\u2019s not so bad in the winter months.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the winter it\u2019s better. In November, when the tourists want to come, the sargassum is gone,\u201d Reyes says.<\/p>\n

As bad as sargassum is for people \u2014 and Collado-Vides stresses that much more study is needed \u2014 it\u2019s far worse for seagrass, fish and other marine life suffocated by seaweed that drops to the bottom, decomposes and creates oxygen-depleted or anoxic layers similar to dead zones.<\/p>\n

\u201cSargassum stays there and goes down into the water column so nobody sees it, but on the bottom it is creating anoxic conditions,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Recounting one recent monitoring expedition, Collado-Vides said: \u201cIt\u2019s really terrible … the amount of vertebrates, the amount of crabs, the amount of fish dead in just a 1-square meter quadrant.\u201d<\/p>\n

– Mark Stevenson, AP News<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scraping the smelly sargassum seaweed off some beaches on Mexico\u2019s resort-studded Caribbean coast has become not only a nightmare, but possibly a health threat, for the workers doing it \u2014 with the quantities washing ashore this year seemingly mountains not mounds. Decomposing sargassum, which is actually algae, generates hydrogen sulfide gas. In small amounts in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":7889,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/storage.googleapis.com\/afs-prod\/media\/9413aeb2010a4488a4d4881f7a150796\/1000.jpeg","fifu_image_alt":"On Mexico\u2019s Caribbean Coast, Mountains of Seaweed Grow","footnotes":""},"categories":[195],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health-environment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7887"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7887\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7888,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7887\/revisions\/7888"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}