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Cleaners hit Puerto Morelos beaches as sargassum begins to arrive

Puerto Morelos, Q.R. — The government of Puerto Morelos reports their first cleaning task due to the arrival of sargassum. Municipal president Laura Fernández Piña says beginning this week, city council staff will be increased along beaches to clean arriving sargassum.

“We will not neglect any front of the administration despite the health emergency, always protecting our staff,” she said. “We are attending to all fronts of the contingency caused by the new SARS CoV-2 coronavirus that has required all our effort and non-vulnerable city council personnel,” said the mayor.

She pointed out that now is the time to face the phenomenon of sargassum, which has not given truce to the Mexican Caribbean in recent years. “We have held meetings between the three levels of government to mitigate again, the affectation by this macroalgae,” she said.

Laura Fernández explained that as of this week, the presence of city council personnel will be increased to carry out the cleaning work along beaches with the gradual arrival of sargassum.

“A group of public services workers comes every day with the a sweeper and tractors among other tools, to remove the macroalgae from the public areas of the municipality. We are ready for the installation of the marine barriers, that helped us so much last year, to avoid massive landfall on the sand and to be able to collect the plant from the sea with special barges,” she added.

She noted that at this time, preventive maintenance is given to the marine bands, which are installed on the seashore and allow the sargassum to go directly onto the collection trucks.

“Beach cleaning is essential to be ready to revive tourism after we overcome the health emergency due to Covid-19. Our sandy areas and the turquoise blue of our sea are one of the main assets that we have as a tourist destination, so we must take care of them and maintain them,” she said.

Luis Cardeña Peña, Project Director of the municipality reported that at the end of April, the first arrivals of sargassum to Puerto Morelos began, but it was minimal. However, over this past week, it has increased which means more personnel and efforts to attend the contingency.

“This year, nature gave us a truce in the first months of the year to be free of the macroalgae, but we are prepared for what arrives now,” he said.