According to statements by Esteban Amaro Mauricio, head of the Sargassum Monitoring Network, the coasts of Quintana Roo will experience a significant increase in the coming weeks, that is, from May to August, with the beaches of Cancún being the most affected.
The Quintana Roo Sargassum Monitoring Network confirmed that the beaches with the highest presence of sargassum will be those of Cancún, such as Playa del Niño, Puerto Juárez, and Puerta del Mar beach, as reported by Sipse.
Amaro stated that “thousands of tons, some 500,000. Mainly in the southern municipalities, Mahahual and Xcalak, Sian Ka’an, Solidaridad, and Tulum,” he indicated.
There are 100 monitored beaches in Isla Mujeres, Benito Juárez, Puerto Morelos, Solidaridad, Cozumel, and Tulum, where it is anticipated that 32 will have a greater accumulation from Riviera Cancún beach before the Moon Palace hotel, up to Tulum.
As reported by REPORTUR.mx, the Citizen Observatory recently communicated that more than half a million tons of pelagic sargassum were seen floating about 100 kilometers east of the Guanaja and Roatán Islands in the Honduran Caribbean, which was expected to arrive in a couple of weeks on the coasts of Quintana Roo. (Fear in the Mexican Caribbean of a sargassum flood in two weeks).
The risk is that the sargassum patch will double its biomass in less than 20 days, due to its ease of growth. The Observatory explains that there is a potential risk when the macroalgae decompose on the shore, as they consume large amounts of oxygen, “causing anoxia and emitting toxic gases such as hydrogen sulfide and methane, very dangerous for human health and responsible for the mass death of many species,” indicated the entity, as reported by Sol Quintana Roo.
Source: Reportur
