You say seaweed, we say sargassum….and those fancy-pants Floridians say ‘red bloom’…..we gotta admit, ‘red bloom’ does make it sound better, although not by much.
How Bad Is It? It’s bad. It’s bad all over the Gulf of Mexico, including US beaches as well as numerous other countries, but when folks head to Mexico for a beach getaway, they don’t want to have to wade through piles of stinky rotting seaweed to get to the water. And it’s having a negative effect on tourism wherever it’s making landfall.
SO, Q-Roo (the state’s rapper name) is stepping up it’s game and has contracted with a company to use a plastic barriers (made out of canvas, with buoys to float) to block most of it from reaching the shore.
Officials don’t expect it to solve the problem (because it depends on the currents and the wind), but claim that it can reduce the quantity of seaweed that arrives at the beaches.
And for you fish-huggers, don’t worry about the fauna, because the Ecology and Environment Secretary swears that they can just “swim right under it”.
Resources:
Quintana Roo to spend 200 million pesos to fight against sargassum
Want to know more about sargassum?
Holy Sargassum! Seaweed Invasion
Lots of sun, and brown slimy seaweed, in the forecast for South Florida beaches
