The federal government will spend 768.7 million pesos this year to intercept sargassum offshore before it reaches Tulum and four other stretches of the Quintana Roo coastline.
President Claudia Sheinbaum announced the money Thursday at her morning news conference in Mexico City, as the opening stage of a program the Navy prices at 2.635 billion pesos across 2026 and 2027. Sheinbaum described the spending as environmental protection rather than a tourism rescue. The algae, she said, does not damage only the visitor economy.
For Tulum, the relevant figure is 10,943 tons, the volume crews have already pulled off municipal beaches this year according to state monitoring data published this week, roughly 11.7 percent of everything collected in Quintana Roo. What the federal plan decides is whether those crews keep receiving that volume on the sand, or whether some of it never arrives.
Two stages, 768.7 million pesos in the first
Navy Secretary Raymundo Pedro Morales laid out the mechanics. Offshore collection capacity has climbed from 627 to 1,227 tons a day over the course of this year, with another 950 tons a day handled on the beaches themselves. Stage one lifts the offshore number to 1,870 tons a day.
The 2026 purchase list includes:
- Two specialized tugboats
- Six coastal sargassum vessels
- 1.5 kilometers of dynamic barriers
- About 50 kilometers of coastal containment barrier
Stage two, scheduled for 2027, raises the target to 4,000 tons a day using open-water vessels, more barriers, and confinement systems. The current fleet counts two sargassum ships and 11 coastal boats, supported by amphibious equipment and personnel from all three levels of government plus private operators.
"The intention is to reverse the trend and collect mainly at sea," Morales said.
Sargassum in Tulum has passed 10,900 tons
The plan concentrates on five corridors: Cancún, Playa del Carmen, Puerto Morelos, Tulum, and Mahahual. Together they cover between 40 and 50 kilometers of shoreline, a narrow slice of the state's coast that absorbs most of its visitors and most of its cleanup budget.
Tulum ranks fifth among Quintana Roo municipalities by volume collected. Playa del Carmen leads with 33,511 tons, followed by Cancún with 21,669, Puerto Morelos with 11,574, and Othón P. Blanco with 10,945, a margin of two tons over Tulum. The ranking has held steady through the season.
Barrier coverage tells a smaller story than the federal announcement suggests. State figures put installed anti-sargassum barriers at 9,800 meters, about 61 percent of the 16,030 meters Quintana Roo planned for this year. The 50 kilometers Semar intends to buy would be a different order of infrastructure, deployed across five municipalities rather than concentrated on any one beach.
A rupture in 2011, and 27 times the historical average
Environment Secretary Alicia Bárcena traced the surge to the breakup of the Sargasso Sea in 2011, which pushed the macroalgae into the tropical Atlantic. Currents and wind carry it into the Caribbean from there, and Mexico is one of many recipients.
Her numbers for this year are the sharpest in the file. Up to 90,538 tons of sargassum have been floating off the Mexican Caribbean on a single day, against an average closer to 40,000 in other years. Around 10 percent of that mass reaches the Quintana Roo coast, which works out to roughly 9,054 tons a day at peak intensity.
"In 2026 it was four times more than 2025, and 27 times the historical average," Bárcena said, calling the year genuinely difficult and atypical.
Semarnat recorded 92,782 tons collected in 2025. The 2026 count already stands at 96,151, with the heaviest months of the season not yet closed.
From wet algae to biochar and export fertilizer
Sargassum pulled from the water has to dry before it can be handled, a step that removes the compounds that turn it toxic as it rots. Sand is then separated out and returned, and what remains becomes an organic powder with industrial uses. Companies in Quintana Roo already recycle the wet material into compost, some of it exported for agricultural use.
Fonatur director Sebastián Ramírez said his agency will focus on final disposal and circular economy applications, pointing to firms producing biofertilizers, biochar, and biogas from the harvest.
He also named the problem that hotel operators complain about most. Lifting sargassum off a beach tends to lift the beach with it. Sheinbaum has asked Fonatur to document removal practices that preserve sand and to coordinate those methods with hoteliers.
A group of roughly 150 scientists, working with Semarnat and the science ministry, is studying the causes of the increase and the uses the biomass might support.
Ten satellites watching 140 beaches
Governor Mara Lezama said the state operates an environmental monitoring center that draws imagery from 10 European Space Agency satellites to track more than 140 beaches, issue daily forecasts, and predict where the algae will land. Her administration has spent more than 770 million pesos on the phenomenon since taking office.
Interception before landfall, she said, has proved the most effective approach available.
Sheinbaum said another sargassum vessel will join the fleet soon. Nobody at the podium gave a date for it, or for the two tugboats and six coastal boats that stage one is supposed to buy. The next fixed point on the calendar is October 1, when Cancún hosts a two-day international conference on sargassum. By then the 2026 total will have moved well past the record it broke in July.
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