As a child I remember going to the beach, usually Panama City Beach, FL or somewhere on the gulf coast, and it was a "winner of a year" if we got there and the ocean was the emerald green/blue that it was known for. Unfortunately, there would be years that this slimy, green seaweed inhabited our beautiful ocean causing us to have to rinse off every time we got out and it would cause the entire beach to smell rotten, decaying things. Thinking back, those are my earliest memories of seaweed and what I thought of as I was entering into the travel industry and hearing about "seaweed season" in the Caribbean. Boy was I wrong.
Seaweed Season in the Caribbean, sometimes called Sargassum, is not just the slimy, green seaweed that I grew up seeing in the Gulf but something that's more brown and leafy, and can come in HUGE piles. Sargassum is a macroalgae that grows in tropical waters and climates and actually feeds many species of fish and organisms in the oceans. As there has been more runoff from the Amazon Rainforest, the amount of sargassum produced each year has continued to increase. As we all know, Mother Nature is completely unpredictable, meaning that sargassum is completely unpredictable. The beaches could be unusable one day, and then completely clear the next. It can be sparse, just in patches out in the water, giving room to swim around it or it can be so thick that you can't walk or swim through it.
Sargassum affects, or plagues, many areas of the Caribbean and in 2023 is even moving up into the Gulf of Mexico and expected to hit an area of South Florida, on the Atlantic side. The Caribbean coastline of Mexico, around the Cancun, Riviera Maya, Tulum, Playa del Carmen areas and the Dominican Republic (around Punta Cana) have continued seeing historic records of Sargassum each summer. It used to start in late May and go through October but in recent years has started as early as April and not finished until late November and even December. This has been a huge hit to the tourism economy in these areas causing them to take extreme measures such as purchasing million dollar barriers to try and block the sargassum from coming in to reach the beaches. Many of the beachfront resorts in the areas also spend huge amounts of money in labor to employees who's sole responsibility is to keep the beach clear of sargassum either by removing it with a tractor or by hand. These employees work from sun up to sun down, tirelessly trying to keep the beaches clean for their patrons.
There are areas of the Caribbean that tend to fare well when it comes to the summer Sargassum plague. These areas include places such as Negril, Jamaica, the Bahamas, and Aruba. Other areas in Jamaica, St. Lucia, and Barbados are effected from time to time but tend to fare better than Mexico and the Dominican Republic.
When planning a trip to the Caribbean, especially during the summer vacation months, it's important to keep this information in mind. If the beach and that beautiful Caribbean blue water is something that is important to you, you'll want to make sure that you're talking to your travel agent about a location that doesn't have to worry with the sargassum issues or somewhere that has created special lagoons and barriers to keep their beaches free and clear.
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