Riviera Maya, Q.R. — The Government of Mexico is allocating two billion pesos to address and manage sargassum in Quintana Roo. Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum made the announcement Thursday during a press conference.
According to Sheinbaum, the money will be used for a strategy to improve seaweed collection aimed at Cancun, Playa del Carmen, Puerto Morelos, Tulum, and Mahahual.
The first phase will involve an investment of 768.7 million pesos to increase collection capacity from the current 1,227 tons per day to 1,870 tons. A second phase will increase this to 4,000 tons per day, she said.
President Sheinbaum said her government is allocating two billion pesos to the Sargassum Attention and Management Strategy through three actions. They include more sargassum boats, placement barriers and acquisition of equipment for sustainable collection.
“The Mexican government is allocating two billion pesos for comprehensive sargassum management. What are we going to do? One, capture more sargassum at sea. For this purpose, more sargassum-collecting vessels are being acquired.
“Two, more barriers. The best barriers available in Quintana Roo and worldwide will be installed to protect the beaches and three, collect all sargassum that washes ashore. How do we do it? With best practices.
“There are already environmental regulations that tell us how to collect it, but now we are informing all hotel owners about the best practices for collecting it on the beach without taking the sand with it. That’s the gist of it.
“Where are we going to focus our efforts? Well, in the five most important tourist areas of Quintana Roo. Cancun, Playa del Carmen, Puerto Morelos, Tulum, and Mahahual.
“These five areas cover approximately 40 to 50 kilometers of beaches,” she explained.
Alicia Bárcena Ibarra, the Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources, explained that the presence of sargassum “has gone from a temporary phenomenon of a few months to one of long and continuous presence.”
“This year we had much more sargassum in the region. In the Mexican Caribbean it reaches a maximum of 90,538 tons per day. Under low conditions, the level is 40,000 tons. Thus, the presence in 2016 was 27 times greater than the historical average.
“It is estimated that 10 percent of the volume washes up on the coasts of Quintana Roo. We are in a difficult, atypical year,” she stated Thursday during the press conference.
Bárcena Ibarra also announced that an international meeting will be held on October 1 and 2 with the participation of the affected Caribbean countries and other nations, such as Japan, that could contribute solutions to this problem.
Regarding recycling, she specified that special attention has been paid to its circularity. In this respect, he mentioned that technologies for its industrialization are being jointly researched.
At the national level, there are 198 initiatives, 11 of which have the potential for industrial scaling, such as CarbonWave, which produces biogas, bioethanol, sodium alginate, fucoidan, biofertilizers, among other products, and is envisioned as the anchor company of the Circular Economy Development Hub in Puerto Morelos.
In Mexico, she said there are 39 companies that already develop products such as biogas, bioethanol, sodium alginate, fucoidan, biofertilizers, plastic lumber, laminates, biochar, graphene oxide, selective coating paints and bioplastics.
Secretary of the Navy Raymundo Pedro Morales Ángeles, reported that the current strategy regarding sargassum consists of recovering the tourist and environmental functionality of the Caribbean beaches.
He said Thursday that strategy is through a permanent scheme of containment and collection at sea under two premises which are to increase the collection capacity and designate a final disposal site for the sargassum. They are also working on more efficient collection actions in open waters and on beaches.
He explained that the sargassum collection efforts utilize ocean-going sargassum vessels, dynamic barriers, coastal containment barriers, coastal dynamic barriers, and coastal sargassum harvesters; and on the beach, collection teams, amphibious sargassum harvesters, and other machinery.
With these current efforts, 1,227 tons are collected daily at sea and 950 tons on beaches, using two sargassum collection vessels, 11 coastal sargassum harvesters, various smaller vessels, vehicles, and personnel.
In response, he highlighted that, as part of the reinforcement, the 2 billion peso investment is divided into two stages: 768.7 million pesos to increase capacity to 1,870 tons per day with the acquisition of two tugboats, six coastal sargassum harvesters, more dynamic barriers, and 50 kilometers of coastal containment barriers. In a second stage, the daily collection capacity will increase to 4,000 tons.
The Director General of the National Fund for Tourism Development, Sebastián Ramírez Mendoza, stated that the sargassum collection is being carried out sustainably, protecting the beach from erosion, and that four integrated management sites have been established for its final disposal.
Furthermore, efforts are underway to recycle, reuse, and give it a new life.
The governor of Quintana Roo, Mara Lezama Espinosa, reported that her administration has allocated 770 million pesos to strengthen satellite monitoring through the state’s Monitoring Center.
She said the monitoring centre is currently able to provide simultaneous surveillance of 140 beaches. She said Quintana Roo has a satellite monitoring center that allows the identification of sargassum arrival zones and the determination of the points where its capture should be carried out, in addition to providing information on beach conditions.
Of the current collection capacity of 1,227 tons of sargassum per day, 950 tons corresponds to work removal on beaches.
