Seaweed invasion threatening tourism on Caribbean coasts
They sure don't like what they're see'in
these days in most of the Caribbean
and I also suppose they're thinkin'
if only the odor were less stinkin'.
For, from all reports, it seems indeed
there is much too much seaweed.
It's very hard to do the limbo
or otherwise act the bimbo,
and modestly if suggestively, please,
when, instead of green grass-o,
you're up to your knees
in a brown gift from the Sargasso.
And even the hardy turtle
almost entirely covered by its shell
yet admired by Ogden Nash* for still being able to be fertile,
despite it and other kinds of hell,
may find this rotting sediment
to be a final fatal impediment.
HZ L
10/29/15
*
| The Turtle by Ogden Nash | ||
| The turtle lives 'twixt plated decks Which practically conceal its sex. I think it clever of the turtle In such a fix to be so fertile. |
LATIN AMERICA
Seaweed invasion threatening tourism on Mexico’s Caribbean coast
Changes in water conditions causing huge influx of gulfweed in popular vacation spots
PAULA CHOUZA Playa del Carmen 31 AGO 2015 - 17:18 CEST
A mantle of seaweed covering part of the sand at Playa del Carmen beach. / SAÚL RUIZ
It is 2pm and temperatures are rising in Playa del Carmen, one of the most popular tourist destinations on the Riviera Maya, situated 70 kilometers from Cancún. The staff of a beach-side hotel are preparing a paella under a huge Spanish flag while loudspeakers blare out music. About 20 guests are enjoying the party but the beach is deserted in this area. A mantle of dark seaweed has covered part of the sand and a nauseating odor fills the air, as if there were a sewer nearby. The ocean has lost its turquoise color and seems to have mixed with the earth.
A few months ago, hotel owners on the Mexican Caribbean coast were surprised by an invasion of gulfweed. Now, rising temperatures and a lack of clean-up resources have turned the situation into a nightmare for vacationers as this brownish-gray algae rots in the sand.
“The arrival of gulfweed is natural but unusual in such large quantities,” says José Luis Prieto Funes, a representative from the Mexican Ministry of Environment in Quintana Roo. “Every two or three years the deep-sea gulfweed arrives from the Sargasso Sea east of the United States or from the mouths of the Amazon and Orinoco rivers, but never in such abundant quantities.”
Prieto Funes says the El Niño weather cycle has led to increased water temperatures, winds and strong currents and may be the cause of the problem, which is also affecting beaches in Trinidad and Tobago, Saint Martin, Puerto Rico and Barbados.
“Algae are sensitive to temperatures and the changes in the water may be associated with an increase in gulfweed,” says Daniel León Álvarez, a researcher from the National Autonomous University of Mexico. “However, unless we know the causes behind the increase, we cannot come up with a plan to solve it.”
Does gulfweed pose a danger?
“Gulfweed is a natural phenomenon that causes no harm but, when there is too much of it and it is not removed from the sand, it can produce certain kinds of pollutants,” José Luis Prieto of the Mexican environment ministry says.
“The algae are terrestrial plants that grow naturally,” says Dr. Daniel León Álvarez. “Sometimes they form large banks under the surface and they also have an ecological function because these are where many other organisms find refuge and food. The problem begins when it rots, like any other decomposing material. That is why it must be removed.”
The Mexican government has launched an emergency program to reduce the harmful effects on the environment but the project has hit two obstacles: American reefs and the arrival of turtles to lay eggs on the coast. “The biodiversity is very fragile and the measures need to be very careful. We have allocated 15 million pesos ($886,000) for a manual cleanup of the protected areas and we are supporting municipalities and regional governments with 12 million pesos ($700,000) for machines. We are investing 65 million pesos ($3.8 million) more in new technologies and, along with other institutions, studying to determine the best techniques” to use.
“Tourists complain, saying they come to good hotels and they can’t believe they don’t have a tractor,” says Josué, a 35-year-old member of one of the three cleanup crews who were sweeping the sand on Playa del Carmen at around noon on Saturday. “The algae have been coming since December. Our waists hurt from picking them up. Every day we bury the seaweed” in holes dug in the sand. Josué works 12-hour shifts and makes $413 a month without medical insurance. His tools are broken and so is his spirit.
“Some of the excess gulfweed that comes to the coast is used to build dunes on the coast,” Prieto Funes says. “Some is also used as compost after being treated with chemical fertilizers and some of it is buried in eroded areas.”
Meanwhile, the plague is discouraging tourists from bathing in this one-time Mexican paradise. Although hotels have had a high number of bookings in August because vacation packages are sold months ahead, the sector fears a drop in profits in the long term.
Translation by Dyane Jean François
Las algas enredan al corazón turístico de México - El País
Aug 31, 2015 - El calor arrecia a las dos de la tarde en el arenal de Playa del Carmen, un pequeño pueblo a 70 kilómetros de Cancún que desde hace ...
Seaweed Threatens Caribbean Tourism
SARGASSUM SEAWEED IN CANCUN, MEXICO: From Cancun to coastal areas of Texas, a strange surge of sargassum seaweed is turning off tourists, killing wildlife & is considered a national disaster in Tobago, West Indies. Photo: AP/Daily Mail Online/Pinterest.com
Thick, brown, smelly sargassum seaweed has created a state of emergency in some parts of the Caribbean, wreaking havoc from the Gulf shores of Texas to Tobago and the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean, and the popular hotspots along Mexico’s Riviera Maya like Cancun.
The UMHS Endeavour looks at why seaweed is such a problem this summer in the Caribbean, what causes it, and what’s being done to help communities clean up local beaches and bays in time for the coming tourist season in fall and winter.
To date, the UMHS Endeavour has heard no reports from students at Caribbean medical schools in St. Kitts and Nevis about seaweed clogging beaches in the twin island nation this summer, but TripAdvisor.com had customer reviews of a seaweed problem in the waters around a popular St. Kitts resort back in spring 2012.
SEAWEED A ‘NATIONAL DISASTER’ IN TINY TOBAGO: Seaweed clogs a bay in Tobago, an island on which officials have declared the slimy stuff a national disaster. Photo: Farley Augustine/Yahoo Travel
Seaweed Clogs Caribbean & Kills Wildlife
In late June 2015, Newsweek reported a problem with sargassum seaweed clogging beaches from Galveston, Texas to tiny Tobago in the Caribbean (http://www.newsweek.com/2015/07/10/sargassum-ruining-beaches-texas-tobago-347735.html).
At an August 4, 2015 news conference, the Tobago House of Assembly “declared a natural disaster and announced a $3 million budget to tackle the influx of seaweed on the island’s Atlantic coast,” Laura Begley Bloom wrote in a Yahoo Travel article online (https://www.yahoo.com/travel/caribbean-clogged-seaweed-invasion-takes-over-125850888537.html).
Yahoo Travel said that on July 30, 2015, Mexico’s Environment Department said the country would hire 4,600 temporary workers and spend $9.1 million on the Riviera Maya (the Caribbean coast). Cancun has already cleaned up approximately 100 tons of seaweed.
Seaweed piles reached four feet tall in parts of Antigua, Yahoo Travel wrote. On the island of Barbados, 42 turtles died from suffocation after being caught in seaweed.
The seaweed emits a strong, putrid odor as it rots in the hot sun. Britain’s The Guardian wrote in an August 10, 2015 article (http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/aug/10/caribbean-bound-tourists-cancel-holidays-due-to-foul-smelling-seaweed) that the seaweed smells like rotten eggs and attracts biting sand fleas. Sargassum seaweed gets its name from the Portuguese word for “grape.”
The seaweed has piled up as high as 10 feet on some Caribbean beaches, the Guardian said.
As high tourist season approaches for fall and winter, Caribbean officials are concerned the seaweed will hurt tourism. The Guardian reported that officials want an emergency meeting of the 15-nation Caribbean Community to help combat the problem before the season starts.
“This has been the worst year we’ve seen. We need to have a regional effort because this unsightly seaweed could end up affecting the image of the Caribbean,” Christopher James, chairman of the Tobago Hotel and Tourism Association, told the Guardian.
CRISIS IN CANCUN: The sargassum seaweed is so bad in Cancun, Mexico that the government has hired thousands of temporary workers to clean up the mess before the fall & winter tourist season starts. Photo: The Guardian/Israel Leal/AP
Soil Emptying Into Ocean from Amazon Deforestation May Be Cause
Many theories exist on the cause of the growing sargassum seaweed problem, the Guardian said. They include the warming ocean temperatures and “changes in the ocean currents due to climate change.” Other researchers say the seaweed is being caused by “increased land-based nutrients and pollutants washing into the water, including nitrogen-heavy fertilizers and sewage waste that fuels the blooms,” the Guardian said.
Mats of drifting sargassum seaweed from the Caribbean and Atlantic have been reported “as far away as Sierra Leone and Ghana,” the Guardian said.
Newsweek’s article said increases in sargassum were initially reported in the Greater and Lesser Antilles in 2011 and 2012.
“The problem appears to have begun many miles away,” Melissa Gaskill wrote in Newsweek. “In recent years, the Amazon basin has experienced some of the world’s highest rates of deforestation. And without vegetation to hold soil in place, rain washes that soil and whatever it contains into streams and rivers. So when the Amazon basin saw greater than normal amounts of rain in 2011 and 2012, unusually high levels of nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus washed into Atlantic waters around the mouth of the Amazon River off the north coast of Brazil. Sargassum passed through this nutrient-rich water and responded by growing like, well, a weed. Ocean currents carried it from there to the Lesser Antilles and western Caribbean.”
Newsweek wrote that Jim Franks, a senior research scientist at the University of Southern Mississippi’s Gulf Coast Research Laboratory, has started a website to document reports of “large quantities of sargassum seaweed” and “satellite data suggest the amount of sargassum in the Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean and Atlantic may hit an all-time high in 2015.”
“For [Caribbean] communities, such an overwhelming influx is difficult to deal with,” Mr. Franks told Newsweek. “It radically impacted tourism on some islands, creating economic and environmental hardship. I can’t overemphasize how important this is to the region. We need a well-thought-out strategy of response.”
No comments:
Post a Comment