Playa del Carmen, Q.R. — Two sargassum collection vessels are being made available for Playa del Carmen. The two vessels are expected to arrive next week. They will be docked at the Ultramar pier in the city’s center, as planned.
María de Lourdes Várguez Ocampo, director of Solidaridad Zofemat, confirmed that the Secretary of the Navy (Semar) has made the two vessels available for Playa del Carmen waters.
She says that this year, the municipality will spend around 50 million peso containing and removing the seaweed.
“If we have clean and well-kept beaches, we will have more tourism and, therefore, the hotels will have higher rates of occupation,” said María de Lourdes Várguez Ocampo.
“Unlike the past administration, the operation is much more organized with state and federal authorities,” she added saying that they will work to avoid beach erosion as much as possible when collecting the washed up seaweed for removal.
Várguez Ocampo said that in this administration, more equipment has been purchased. This, with the more than 200 people hired to manually keep the municipal beaches clean and free of seaweed.
“We are going to dedicate ourselves to removing the sargassum manually. In this way, we will manage to control the cleanliness of the 20 beaches that we have,” she said.
Várguez Ocampo also said that the city will being to install the anti sargassum barriers. Approximately 2,500 linear meters will be installed. She said that initially, 30 anchor points will be installed. “At the beginning of April, the barrier will be extended,” she said.
