Riviera Maya, Q.R. — An agreement has been signed that will see Quintana Roo’s sargassum put to better use next year. For the 2026 season, the government will push to have the state’s seaweed transformed into an asset.
Each seaweed season, the state of Quintana Roo spends billions dealing with the arrival of the unwanted sargassum. During 2025, hotels across the state forked out over 2.7 billion pesos keeping their beaches clear of the seaweed.
Tony Chávez, President of the Riviera Maya Hotel Association, said that Mexico receives around 45 million tourists each year, 22 million of whom visit the state of Quintana Roo.
Approximately 95 percent of the people living in the state depend on tourism, “so, that’s the importance of this phenomenon, that it doesn’t negatively impact tourism in a destination like the Mexican Caribbean,” he noted.
He explained that the new agreement, which was signed earlier this month between the Instituto Mexicano de Investigación en Pesca y Acuacultura Sustentables (Imipas), the Secretaría de Agricultura y Desarrollo Rural (Agricultura), the Asociación de Hoteles de la Riviera Maya (Ahrm) y The Seas We Love (TSWL), will turn sargassum into a raw material for production.
According to Chávez, approximately $150 million USD is spent annually by the state’s hotels to deal with the sargassum that arrives across Quintana Roo. The new initiative will help to transform sargassum into a raw material now that they have greater scientific knowledge.
“Today, with the support of Imipas, we have greater scientific knowledge and institutional capacity to leverage this collaboration and turn it into an opportunity,” he said.
Ignacio Muñoz Gorbea, the CEO of The Seas We Love, said the agreement “is a long-term collaborative commitment with the only federal government agency capable of managing sargassum, which is Imipas. What we seek is to safeguard the well-being and economic development of the people of Quintana Roo, both locals and tourists.”
Muñoz Gorbea says this technical cooperation will position Mexico as a leader in the Caribbean since the region generates millions of tons of sargassum annually. He says Imipas will assume the responsibility of structuring a sargassum governance model and developing a value-added market.
Through this agreement, essential technical aspects will be defined such as harvesting sites that allow for maximizing efficient use, innovation and technology transfer through the development of sustainable fishing techniques and gear for sargassum collection, optimal harvesting periods and the necessary conditions to provide certainty for industrial investments.
Chávez says that the state’s tourism sector is advancing with a coordinated strategy with the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat), the Ministry of the Navy (Semar) and federal authorities to collect sargassum at sea before it reaches the coast.
He reported that for next year, they have set a goal of reducing its environmental and tourism impact by up to 80 percent.
Chávez explained that from the beginning, the vision of the hotel sector has been to prevent sargassum from reaching the beaches since in addition to affecting tourism, it also damages the reefs, causes erosion, affects marine species and generates millions of dollars in daily beach cleaning costs.
“If we manage to stop 80 percent of the sargassum in the open sea and only 20 percent reaches the shore, it would be a great success,” he said.
Chávez explained that currently, different permits are required to collect sargassum from the sea, transport it to land and process it. Those different permits come from different agencies such as Conapesca, the Ministry of Energy, Tourism and Finance.
“There are seven secretariats involved. In December, we will ask them to simplify the procedures because we need permits to collect it, transport it, process it and convert it into fuel or fertilizer,” he explained.
He said that as part of the plan, a plot of land donated by the state government to the federal government was arranged. That land will be used to create an industrial development hub where the collected sargassum will arrive and where the companies responsible for processing it would operate.
He said that these companies could access tax incentives including a 100 percent exemption which would generate jobs and promote a marine bioindustry with clean energy.
The goal is to transform sargassum into useful products such as biofertilizers, biofuels and alternative materials, which would position Mexico as a leader in circular economy within the Caribbean.
He said that in the meantime, the hotels continue to bear the brunt of the cost of dealing with the washed-up sargassum, an expense that over time, has become “unsustainable. We cannot continue to receive these quantities on our shores. We need permanent solutions,” he said.
The 2025 sargassum season came to an end approximately one month earlier than anticipated. The state government reported that as of mid-October, 120,000 tons of seaweed had been collected from Quintana Roo beaches.
