Quintana Roo has removed more than 105,000 tons of sargassum from its waters and beaches so far this year, passing the record set across all of 2025 before the season has ended.
The count comes from official data published this week. Last year's total of 92,783 tons had stood as the state record, and it was passed before the middle of August.
For Tulum, the statewide total matters less than the map. Esteban Amaro Mauricio, who directs the Sargassum Monitoring Network in Quintana Roo, said arrivals are trending down overall but remain erratic, and that Tulum and Mahahual still hold significant accumulations.
Two counts, both above 100,000 tons
The state government keeps its own tally. Brandon Mex Martínez, director of special waste management for the Quintana Roo government, put the total collected at sea and on the beaches at 104,700 tons. Both figures were released within days of each other, and both sit above a 100,000-ton line no previous season had reached.
The projection keeps moving. Officials had earlier estimated that around 119,000 tons would reach the coast throughout 2026. State figures reported this month by Excélsior now put the year-end total at a minimum of 130,000 tons. That would leave close to 25,000 tons still to come ashore.
Óscar Rébora, Quintana Roo's secretary of ecology and environment, offered one caveat in late July, when the running total stood near 81,000 tons. A higher number on the ledger does not automatically mean more algae in the water, he said, because collection capacity has grown through coordination between the navy, the state, and the municipalities. More sargassum removed can also mean more sargassum caught.
Tulum and Mahahual are still taking the heaviest sargassum loads
Amaro Mauricio described a coastline that changes week to week. Playa del Carmen has seen lighter arrivals. Puerto Morelos was clean days ago and then took a significant landing this week. Cancún moves between green, yellow, and orange on the monitoring scale, sometimes inside the same stretch of days.
The network's most recent report, cited by La Jornada, splits the state in two.
- Northern zone: 22 beaches on red, down from 30 at the start of August. Another 17 are orange, 13 yellow, and 45 green. Three are free of the algae.
- Southern zone: the 30 beaches that were red 15 days ago are still red. Two are orange, three yellow, three green, and two are clean.
Red on that scale means excessive arrival. The southern half of the state has barely moved since the start of the month.
Containment on the water has its limits. Rébora said in late July that 9,450 meters of anti-sargassum barriers were operating off Puerto Morelos, Playa del Carmen, Tulum, and Mahahual, part of a plan for 16,030 meters this season, and that heavy surf had damaged some of the infrastructure installed off Cancún and Playa del Carmen.
Fertilizer runoff from as far away as Brazil
Scientists attribute blooms of this size to nutrient-rich currents carrying nitrogen and phosphorus from fertilizers, much of it traced to agricultural producers such as Brazil, combined with changing ocean conditions.
The scale offshore explains the pressure on the shoreline. Semarnat head Alicia Bárcena said this month that roughly 90,538 tons of sargassum circulate daily through the Mexican Caribbean, more than double the historic average, and that about 10% of that biomass reaches the Quintana Roo coast.
What happens after it lands is the part visitors notice. Sargassum rots on the sand and releases hydrogen sulfide, a gas that irritates the airways. The smell alone keeps people off the beach.
For the crews assigned to beach cleanup, the work has become a full-time job. Over the past decade, the algae has repeatedly fouled beaches that used to be clear, and it has put pressure on the tourism industry that supports the state economy.
Public money still pays for cleanup, not for a market
Some companies argue the cost curve only bends if the algae becomes worth something.
Sebastián Aguilar de Alba, technology and innovation director at Carbonwave, said one strategy for mitigating the problem is creating value from it. His company processes sargassum into liquid biostimulants and fertilizers.
Mexico's environment ministry has already identified dozens of viable projects to turn the algae into fertilizers, biofuels, and bioplastics. The financing has not followed. Most public funds still go to collection.
The storms that cleared the sand in 2020
Amaro Mauricio expects the tropical cyclone season to help push the algae away from the coast. He pointed to 2020, when three hydrological events struck the Quintana Roo shoreline during the pandemic, leaving the beaches very clean.
The relief, if it arrives, comes with hurricane season.
The monitoring network updates its readings daily at roughly 140 points, which is the only dependable way to plan a beach day for the week when Puerto Morelos can go from clean to buried.
Rébora put the end of the arrival season somewhere in early or mid-October, then added that the forecasts remain uncertain. That is the honest position. The map is redrawn every week, and until a storm or the calendar changes it, the crews stay on the sand.
Has the sargassum changed how you plan a beach day in Tulum this summer? Join the conversation and share your perspective with us on Instagram and Facebook at @thetulumtimes.