President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico unveiled a $115 million plan on Thursday to combat one of the most pernicious threats to the nation’s crucial tourism industry: a record-breaking scourge of seaweed that is spoiling vacations up and down Mexico’s prized Caribbean coast.
The plan centers on two 200-foot ships that can haul in more than three tons of seaweed a minute and that will trawl the open seas off Mexico’s east coast, Ms. Sheinbaum said during her daily news conference. Mexico’s Navy will also install more than 30 miles of containment barriers to trap the seaweed as it nears the shore. And hundreds of workers from the military, as well as hotels and local governments, will use heavy machinery and pitchforks to heave off the mess that makes it through.
The seaweed — a stinky, brown algae known as sargassum — has plagued Mexico and the broader region for more than a decade, but this year’s forecast is setting records. Up to 9,000 tons of sargassum arrive each day to the coast of Quintana Roo, the Mexican state that includes the tourist hot spots Cancún and Tulum, according to environmental officials. That is four times the amount that washed up per day last year and 27 times the historic daily average.
The scope of the plan shows how big of a threat the seaweed poses to the Mexican economy. Tourists have been complaining and, in some cases, changing plans because of the onslaught of seaweed, threatening revenues that account for nearly 9 percent of Mexico’s economy.
One study published this year estimated that the presence of sargassum on a beach was associated with a roughly 11 percent decline in local economic activity, with negative effects persisting for up to 12 months after the seaweed was first detected.
Ms. Sheinbaum has portrayed the effort as an urgent priority, touring the affected area by helicopter earlier this month and bringing out her top military and science officials on Thursday for the hourlong presentation.
The region’s stretch of powdery sand beaches and turquoise water amounts to Mexico’s most important tourist destination, and high season, when millions of visitors from around the world plan to arrive, begins in the fall.
“The effort so far has been titanic, but we have to do more to prevent sargassum from reaching the beaches,” Ms. Sheinbaum said.
Since 2011, shifting wind patterns have carried sargassum outside of its natural home in the North Atlantic — where it serves as a habitat and source of food for marine species — to the south, where chemical agricultural runoff from Africa and Brazil have helped fuel a massive growth. Rising ocean temperatures caused by climate change have also played a role in the speed at which it grows, scientists believe.
When ocean currents and winds carry the bloom onto shore, it layers into thick, unsightly mounds that smother wildlife and, as they decompose, release gas that makes the beach smell like a sewer. With prolonged exposure, the gases — primarily hydrogen sulfide and ammonia — can be harmful to humans. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recommends staying away from areas where sargassum is decomposing.
The decomposing seaweed can also turn the surrounding water a murky brown — a phenomenon known as a brown tide, which causes underwater oxygen levels to plunge, killing off scores of fish.
The Mexican effort is focused on capturing more of the seaweed at sea, before it becomes a problem for vacationers. One ship, which can hold up to 200 tons of the seaweed, is already operating in the Caribbean Sea, according to Raymundo Pedro Morales Ángeles, Mexico’s navy secretary. The second, with a capacity for 700 tons, is currently at a port on Mexico’s Pacific Coast waiting to cross the Panama Canal and is expected to join the fight in a month, he said.
The ships are modified roll-on, roll-off vessels, which are typically used to move cars between international ports like a floating garage. Off the front of the ships, the Mexican Navy has installed a collection system consisting of four bands that lower into the ocean to catch seaweed, moving in a continuous loop “like the endless chains of a tortilla-making machine,” Mr. Morales Ángeles said.
The navy is also deploying smaller boats towing nets to collect seaweed closer to shore, and will contribute more than 300 soldiers to dispose of the seaweed on land, who will join hundreds more workers already employed by state and local governments and individual hotels.
Clearing sargassum from about a yard of sandy beach can cost a hotel as much as $60 a month — a figure that can add up, considering the lengthy shorelines of some beachfront properties, according to Roberto Cintrón, former president of a local hotel association.
At Oasis Hotels & Resorts, a collection of all-inclusive properties in Cancún’s popular hotel zone, it takes nearly 200 people working round-the-clock shifts to churn through the daily onslaught, Jesús Almaguer, the company’s commercial director and another former association chief, said.
Speaking at the news conference Thursday, Iván Chávez, the executive vice president of the Mexican luxury resort developer Grupo Vidanta, called the investment “the most comprehensive response to sargassum in the world.”
“For years, everyone fought this battle on their own — each hotel, each municipality with its own netting and its own methods,” he said. “Today, that is over.”
Beyond Mexico, sargassum blooms have washed ashore across the Caribbean and in South Florida this year, clogging beaches in Miami and causing fish to die en masse in the Florida Keys. In the Dominican Republic, which is experiencing its own record sargassum season, officials have discussed purchasing a Mexican sargassum-collecting ship, said Alicia Bárcena Ibarra, Mexico’s environment secretary.
An international summit, expected to include leaders from the Caribbean and Brazil, is planned for October in Cancún, Ms. Bárcena said.
Ricardo Hernández Ruiz contributed reporting.
