Live seaweed conditions, cleanup updates, forecasts, and practical beach planning across Tulum and the Riviera Maya.
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Water up to four degrees warmer and a record sargassum season have put hard numbers on the Riviera Maya climate crisis and on the limits of Mexico's cleanup plan.
Crews clear sargassum in Tulum daily at Playa Conchitas, where sea turtle nests share the shoreline and the state has logged its heaviest season on record.
Quintana Roo has pulled more than 105,000 tons of sargassum from its coast in 2026, already past last year's record. Tulum remains among the beaches with the heaviest accumulations.
Zofemat crews alone have hauled 4,880 metric tons off the sand this year, and the real Tulum sargassum total is higher once hotels and the navy are counted.
Tulum beach hotels are studying whether to operate only outside the sargassum season, after cleanup costs, weak occupancy, and a 274,000-passenger drop at Cancún airport in June.
NASA satellite data ranks the 2026 Sargassum belt just behind 2025, while the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico both broke records and Quintana Roo crews removed 93,000 tons.
The federal plan puts boats and 50 kilometers of barriers between the open sea and the shore. What does it change for sargassum in Tulum, where crews have already cleared 2,800 tons this year?
Mexico will spend 2.635 billion pesos over two years to catch sargassum offshore. Tulum is one of five priority corridors, with 10,943 tons already pulled off its sand.
Eleven Quintana Roo beaches carry excessive seaweed, and Tulum's sargassum levels rank among the worst, as hoteliers warn that cleanup now costs three times their electricity bill.
The Sargasso Sea is the only sea on Earth with no coastline, and the golden weed that named it now arrives on Tulum's shore by the ton. Here is the full story, from Columbus to satellite maps.
Sargassum lands on the sand, not in the cenotes. Our new community vote asks where to swim in Tulum when you head inland, and the ranking is yours to build.
Clearing the sand has become one of the largest line items on the coast. Tulum sargassum costs now have hoteliers asking whether some months are worth opening at all.
About 150 volunteers joined navy and municipal teams for a Tulum sargassum cleanup at Playa del Pueblo, hauling out some 50 tons. Zofemat has removed more than 2,800 tons this year.
The response to the Tulum tourism crisis came from the president herself, while the mayor elected to govern the destination stayed out of sight. The absence is the story.
Sargassum removal in Tulum reached about 140 tons in a single day as more than 400 Navy personnel and municipal crews cleared national park beaches after Sheinbaum's visit.
Oceana wants the federal Tulum sargassum plan grounded in science and regulated harvesting, warning that the alga already carries an environmental, economic, and social toll on the coast.
President Sheinbaum says the government may buy more collection vessels and extend marine barriers to keep sargassum off Quintana Roo beaches this season.
The 2026 surge of sargassum in Tulum has revived research into turning the seaweed into bioasphalt, even as a local official pushes to declare an environmental contingency.
Zofemat says it has collected more than 2,800 metric tons of sargassum in Tulum this season, and its director calls the arrivals atypical for the Quintana Roo coast.
Tulum hotel occupancy is stuck at 41.5 percent with the summer vacation period days away, and downtown hoteliers say the reservations that usually arrive by now simply have not.
Merchants who once paid cartels now describe extortion in Tulum by police and inspectors, while a record sargassum season deepens the town's economic strain.
