The strategy used against sargassum in Tulum and the entire Riviera Maya is inefficient

One more year of massive sargassum recale and the strategy of the Ministry of the Navy (Semar) shows no signs of effectiveness, since the vast majority of the seaweed is collected from the beaches, that is, the attempt to contain the brown tide at sea to prevent the impact on the beaches of Q. Roo has failed.

Since 2018, Rosa Elisa Rodríguez Martínez, researcher at the academic unit of the Puerto Morelos reef system, warned about the Navy’s insufficient strategy to contain the sargassum.

In addition to the slowness of the capture of the algae at sea, without an integral plan that contemplates the industrialization of sargassum and the efficient capture in the open sea, the actions announced by the federal government are insufficient, said the expert at the time.

“One of the problems is that it is thought that the sargassum is accumulated in some place and the boat will arrive easily to pick it up; but what we see is that it is dispersed in small spots, lines, distributed everywhere.

“In some newspaper articles it is reported that in two days the Navy collects 15 tons of sargassum on the high seas, but that is nothing, because in Puerto Morelos the bands that have been installed to collect it on the beach collect 15 tons per hour,” he explained.