Mexico struggles with flood of coastal seaweed

Hundreds of Mexican hotel workers, tractor operators and Navy personnel are heading out to the beach each day at dawn to clean record masses of rotting sargassum seaweed off pristine Caribbean coastlines around popular tourist resorts. The seasonal phenomenon has caused hotels across the Caribbean to cut rates and invest millions of dollars in clearing up piles of the foul-smelling algae from their beaches, while governments and businesses look for solutions. HOW IT STARTED Sargassum — a brown seaweed that forms floating mats on the ocean surface — was historically confined to the so-called Sargasso Sea in the Atlantic Ocean, but unusually strong winds in 2010 blew sargassum into nutrient-rich tropical waters off West Africa, where it found ideal growing conditions. The displaced seaweed turned into a self-sustaining belt that rides on ocean currents to northern Brazil and through the Caribbean, bringing masses of algae onto Caribbean island nations, the popular Riviera Maya and ...