The Ocean, Seaweed infestation, Mangroves and more in Playa del Carmen, Mexico
Hi everyone,
I decided to take a little walk today to the ocean. As many of you know, it really is my happy place, but for months now here in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, the beach has not been a pretty place. Here's a hint why: sargassum .
It's actually a brown algae or seaweed, but it's become a huge problem as of late.
Here is a photo from a publication put out by the Akumal Dive Shop (very close to here), to show how it looks when things get bad!
Source
Up close, it appears like this,
Source
and those little berry-like bulbs, when they start to decompose, emit a foul, sulphur-like smell. Not very pleasant when you're lying in the sand :)
Here's the lovely path that I take to make my way to the ocean, fingers crossed. The fact that there is absolutely no one on this path is not a good sign though.
I did however see this little guy enjoying the sun :)
And this interesting row of flowers which appear to be a type of lily?
A strange flower though indeed! I've never seen anything quite like it! You?
You'll also notice the chain link fence to the right; it is there to protect the mangrove on the other side.
Mangroves are specific trees and shrubs that live on the coastline in tropical areas and can tolerate salty water; most are very muddy and can survive, in fact thrive, with daily tides infiltrating them. They are also a protector of inland from hurricanes too. There are countless species that live in there as well, and I for one am thankful that the Mexican government protects it.
But it wasn't always the case! This is a photo that I took from my friend's place and that is the mangrove I'm speaking of. At one point, there was a huge condo development that started and thankfully was halted. The how's and why's are unknown to me, but the whole thing is a perfect example of how things seem to work here. The path that I was currently walking on is just a bit to the left of this photo. Isn't just a crazy shame not only the destruction of the mangroves, but the waste and current eyesore of this development?!
Ok, back to my walk. I reached the end of the path and saw this to my right,
and this to my left. Not too bad today, but perhaps it's not all good either.
It's difficult to tell from the photos, but there's a little "hill" before reaching the water, so again now, to my right, at the ocean's edge,
and to my left. Not so good afterall.
They've been cleaning up, unfortunately with heavy machinery which tends to compact the sand (this can affect turtles nesting, e.g.) and remove both sand and nutrients from the shore, which can lead to beach erosion Source
And see those guys in the distance, here they are close up, raking and burying the sargassum.
At the end of May, tonnes of sargassum was left on the beaches by tropical Storm Alberto and authorities responded with a federally-funded 62-million-peso (US $3.3 million) removal project. Source
It may seem like a lot of money, but check out the aftermath photos from the local paper on June 23. How would you like to arrive for your vacation to find your area of the beach looking like this? And remember, tourism is the only economy here in Playa. In one very small area, Playacar, there were 7,300 meters of beach affected; this same area also happens to house some of the major 5-star resorts as well. Source
Why?
There's no clear answers, but this tends to be the consensus:
• Global warming: it’s a tropical plant; therefore, warmer oceans = more ocean to “bloom”. Nonetheless, temperature alone is not enough to make it thrive.
• Pollution: nutrient-rich waters act as fertilizer for the seaweed (it was thought that they were reproducing locally as a result of more nutrients).
• Disturbance in liquid boundaries: winds, storms, and spiraling currents help disperse Sargassum throughout the world’s oceans.
Source
So what now? No one seem to know, so some of the brave, the few, are simply left to enjoy it regardless.
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That's a lot of seaweed! And in my experience, with seaweed comes lots of flies! I've seen this type on the California coast as well - but not THAT much ;)
The path to the beach looks truly wonderful :) I love the inlays and greenery along the path - very tranquil walk I'm sure
Yes it is! And there's flies, but not black flies, more like these little sand flea type things.
I love that path too :) I always have this calm sense of ocean-anticipation when I get on it :)
Those beaches covered with Seaweed must be a drag on the local economy. Nobody wants to travel to a place and see beaches looking like that. They will tell everyone to find another place to vacation.
That's it exactly! Imagine your kids making sandcastles in that?!
Oh wow, I lived on the Gulf Coast for a while and we had our seaweed season too, but it was never quite that bad.
Yes, it's getting really bad. I think it started by 2011 or so, and has gotten progressively worse, with no end in sight at the moment. The clean up is fine, but it really does seem like a bandaid approach at best.
Thanks for stopping by @effofex :)
At first glance I was thinking maybe a nicotina family member but then it is in pretty bright light and the nicotina I had that were white were always nighttime bloomers, So I googled the image and it came up with - hymenocallis speciosa - green-tinge spiderlily -; Here is the wiki site: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hymenocallis_speciosa
For seaweed, someone should gather it and make it into green fuel, or maybe if they tried to cultivate it, they could then kill it.
Hymenocallis speciosa
Hymenocallis speciosa (green-tinge spiderlily) is a species of the genus Hymenocallis that is native to the Windward Islands in the eastern Caribbean. It is cultivated as an ornamental in some areas, and reportedly naturalized in Cuba and the Bahamas.Hymenocallis speciosa is a bulb-forming perennial. Stipe can attain a height of up to 50 cm. Leaves are lanceolate, up to 50 cm long and 10 cm across, narrowing to a petiole below.
So as not to continue to encourage plagiarism I guess now I need to make sure that I do not use the word wiki or leave any links to wiki. I do not see why you needed to post that, it kind of defeats the purpose of providing the link if your going to paste all the text from the link. What you did is plagiarism. Blatant copy and paste with no link or mention of a source. @cheetah and @steemcleaners and the iflag trash guy should be down voting you and sending your bot to the depths of the deep steemit ocean. Whitelist me and do not ever post on a comment I make again. You get this one pass from me flagging you. that is it only one free pass.
You and one other called it! Green-tinge spiderlily it is :) Thanks for doing the research, even though wikitextbot doesn't like it haha I however enjoyed your comment back :)
You would think there has to be some use for the seaweed; I like your idea of fuel. Right now, it's simply a bandaid approach, but they'll have to figure out why it's increasing so much sooner or later.
I did a quick look on google, and there really is a seaweed fuel process being developed. Even the lame stream media last year did a story, (NBC), I didn't watch it or read to much in depth on it, but sems that with seaweed it could supply by one report 10% of America's fuel energy.
Wow, that would be awesome if they picked up on that here. It's behind the times here for sure though; they are just implementing recycling programs but it's all hit and miss. It kills me every time I throw a can or bottle in the garbage 😱
Again a very good post. I learned a lot from following along to your walk on the beach. Really in my life the beaches seemed to have changed so much. I am 36 and seem to remember time when the beaches in CA where clean and the water nice. Now I can't hardly handle being on them and the water always looks a little brown. I mean we really have days where they tell us no to go in the water cause it is so dirty. It makes me sad. Have a good one.
Thank you so much @stever82; I'm so pleased you're enjoying my posts!
I hear you about the condition of the beaches too. I'm 52 and remember the same; such a shame isn't it?! The beaches, not my age haha, although I occasionally lament about that as well :)
Sounds like the sulphur odour is the worst part. Do they regrow easily even after they're removed or do they only appear after a storm? Such a pity that such a lovely beach is spoiled this way.
It all washes up from the ocean, but won't regrow once it's buried. But yes, the smell can be pretty bad at times. It is a real pity in so many ways!
That is an amazing amount of seaweed, especially in the initial cleanup. Sulphur smells are definitely not my favorite, nor are the colors of that stuff. Very unappealing.
A very nice walk though to the beach. I don't recognize the way, so either it wasn't there 20-ish years ago when I was down there, or we stayed in a different part that gave us straight access. No mangroves. I don't even think we saw iguana until we hit Tulum.
I really do like that whole stretch of sea and sand, though, from Cancun to Tulum. It's very nice.
Okay, so I believe I have the answer for the flower. It's called a Green-tinge spiderlilly, and it's most common in the eastern Caribbean, though Cuba and the Bahamas have also naturalized it. It looks like the long white petals can grow to be even more spindly.
Can't tell if that's a native or not of the area or not (the guy in the sand with the surf washing up on him), but he definitely fits the bill. I'm sure he'd rather have a clean beach, but he's obviously much more into just the experience of the sun and the water. :)
It is an awful lot of seaweed, and not very appealing. It's certainly gotten worse over the years, so the "global warming-ists" (I know that's not a word:) are all over it. That guy is a local for sure, and he didn't seem to care one way or the other haha
It is still so beautiful, but I hope it is not a continuing trend. It will eventually hurt the economy if it is; the hotel staff can hardly keep up with the clean up as it is.
The path is a relatively new one because there's a new-ish hotel/condo unit right beside it too. I think it was part of the whole development.
Thanks for the information on the spiderlilly! That name is very appropos; the spindly legs looks very much like a spider too.
yeah, I saw afterward that bashadow beat me to it by several minutes. :)
Okay, so new development. Thing is, I probably wouldn't recognize the place at all unless the part we went to has been preserved and incorporated into the subsequent development. I probably should have tried to buy property then. At the very least, I could have sold it at a profit. The problem becomes being a citizen because of the property rules they have.
I remember seeing seaweed on the beach at the hotel we were staying with the time my wife and I went. It wasn't nearly as bad as what you're showing us now, though. It was more of a dark green and dried out, and while needing attending, wasn't quite as thick.
re: global warming
There's probably some ocean warming going on. Something has to account for the growth. I don't have a problem with that—climate changes, which includes warming. The problem becomes, what you blame it on and then, how do you really do anything about it? If the cure or the cost ultimately is worse than the problem if you try to do it all at once, then obviously, you need to do it slower. If slower isn't going to affect enough change, then there's not a whole lot of incentive to do anything, because it's either it's warming, which leads to destruction, or it's the upheaval of virtually the entire world's financial systems and government spending, which leads to a destruction of some kind.
Whether or not man is responsible becomes rather irrelevant in either case. If it's too late to do anything about it, or slowing down in doable degrees won't help, then destroying the world sooner through economic collapse isn't really the answer.
However, if it's not manmade, then there's still nothing we can do and messing things up for no reason isn't the answer, either.
There are some things that could be done differently, for peace of mind perhaps, but if it's just the sun and the earth's ecosystem going through it's natural progression, and there just happens to be a bunch more of us humans then there were the last time it happened, we're just going to have to figure out how to make it work, and hopefully in a way where we can also be responsible stewards of the world we have to use and inhabit.
Thanks for the walk. That lizard is pretty cool!
You are most welcome! Thanks for stopping by :)
I love the lizard too; I was walking on the street yesterday and nearly stepped right on one because they camoflauge themselves so well. He was a biggie too!!
Just keep loving life, and blogging about it here on the blockchain. No obvious solutions except to lay just a little bit further out. ;p
Great lizard too!
hahaha so true, just close my eyes and float a little further :)
Those lizards are so cool and all over the place! Nearly stepped on one on the street yesterday :) A big one!
Wow! Are they eating bugs and other pests? I find it fascinating which animals end up living close to humans, and I think lizards seem a lot more friendly than racoons or rats.
@ecoinstant, this one was eating some garbage on the street! But it is really cool to just see them "wherever" :)
Wow! Licking wrappers 😮
I guess somebody has to pick up after us humans!
haha yes @ecoinstant ! This time is appeared to be old vegetables of some kind 😅
You know I enjoyed that walk. It was very vivid. I enjoyed the sun, and it didn't hurt at all. Thanks for a nice excursion. I'll have to check back again. You're a gentle tour guide. To me (I'll never go on the beach) the seaweed is just more scenery :)
Hooray, you had some time at the beach and no pain whatsoever :) I'm so pleased that enjoyed your tour today @agmoore ;)
:)
It really is. In clumps like that, it's mind boggling. To find random strands of seaweed, driftwood and so forth. As a kid growing up I loved going to the beach. @steve82 he's right now to find a beach in CA that is not contaminated is hard (possible) but hard. There is so much erosion it is insane. From comparisons, it is crazy how much the coastline has changed from the '70s when I was a kid to now. It's nowhere near the same.
I have an extreme sun allergy, so the pictures really were a nice tour for me, and since I don't have to physically deal with seaweed, it just looks like part of the landscape.
Interesting that you can see the change in the shoreline from your childhood. When we're children we think everything will always be as it is. Then we see it's not.
Sound like you had fun as a kid (at least sometimes). Those memories are precious.
It's rather shocking when we realize as adults that all is not what it seems :(
It is so strange to see, and so different from years ago. Brian and I both vacationed here 20 years ago and the beaches were like you see in photos; white clean sand, multi-colored clear blue water and no erosion. So different today and such a huge shame!