Cancun, Q.R. — Cancun crews are back at it removing tons of sargassum from city beaches. Masses of the seaweed arrived along the coast this week due to stormy weather. Crews from the Public Services Directorate reinforced the cleaning and removal of sargassum in Playa Coral after a mass arrival over three days.
Antonio de la Torre Chambé, head of the department, explained that due to the sandy area’s geographic location on the same coastline as nearby municipalities such as Puerto Morelos and Playa del Carmen, the presence of this seaweed has increased.
He says a permanent brigade of 10 people has been designated to remove the sargassum, which is in addition to two teams of workers who travel to and from the sandbank, making a total of 30 collaborators in charge of this daily action, from 7:00 a.m. until just after 6:00 p.m.
He added that thanks to this work, 2,160 cubic meters of macroalgae have been collected so far this year at Playa Coral, one of the seven Blue Flag beaches in Cancun.
“We ask people to be patient. Cancun’s beaches such as Playa Las Perlas, Playa Del Niño and Playa Langosta are clean and free of sargassum. They are located in front of the southern part of Isla Mujeres.
“The beaches where we’ve had the most grounding is from Playa Gaviota Azul to Playa Coral, but they have not been seriously affected because we remove the sargassum daily. It’s not brown or muddy,” he explained.
Cancun’s Playa Delfines has also suffered from this latest arrival with more than five tons of sargassum removal in a single day.
Tropical Wave Number Two caused more than five tons of sargassum to wash up on the iconic beach, creating a contingency and forcing an increase in efforts to collect the macroalgae from the coast.
Workers from the Federal Maritime Land Zone (Zofemat), responsible for cleaning the sandbanks in Cancun , reported that by noon Wednesday they had already removed more than two tons of macroalgae and by the end of the day, around 6 p.m. more than five tons had been removed.
A large team of workers and heavy machinery worked along the more than 100 meters of beach to collect the sargassum, an unusual amount in the area so far in this season.
