• SEAWEED: Mexico’s famed Caribbean beaches of Cancún are scheduled to reopen on June 8 after more than two months of lockdown stemming from the coronavirus emergency but authorities are already gearing up to confront the massive arrival of sargassum seaweed.
• BLOOM: Less than a decade after becoming a threat to Caribbean tourism-dependent economies from Barbados to Mexico every spring, local monitoring networks in Cancún have already detected this week moderate beachings of foul-smelling sargassum in 18 of 21 beaches.
• LOCKDOWN: “The (sargassum algae) beachings will continue to arrive in the coming days, they are not large but they are being neglected due to the lockdown”, according to the Citizen’s Sargassum Observatory, which monitors 133 beaches across Quintana Roo state.
• BARRIERS: Mexican authorities, tourism industry and scientists across Quintana Roo (pop. 1.5 million) have started to deploy floating boom barriers trying to control the impact of sargassum seaweed on beaches. The Mexican Navy has 8 processing plants to deal with seaweed waste.
