Miles of sargassum, said to be four times the size of the city of Merida, have shifted track.
Rather than fouling beaches as far west as Sisal, the seaweed-like algae is headed to Florida instead, said the head of the Secretariat of Sustainable Development, Sayda Rodríguez Gómez.
Citing a monitoring system that reveals the “loop current,” the state official contradicts an earlier report with dire news for Yucatan state’s coastal area.
According to Rodríguez Gómez, “in relation to Esteban Amaro’s version of the Sargasso Monitoring Network in Cancun, which states that a sargassum stain would be spreading on 120 kilometers of Yucatan beach, the SDS clarified that the possibility that a significant amount of sargassum will reach the Yucatan coast shortly is very remote.”
Rodriguez Gómez indicated that a bulletin issued by the University of South Florida establishes the entry of a considerable accumulation of sargassum in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. But it’s more a threat to Florida than to Yucatan, she said.
On Saturday, the seaweed could be seen a few kilometers from the eastern Yucatan coast. The Gulf side of the Peninsula has so far been spared the intensity of sargassum washing ashore on the more touristy Caribbean side.
Source: Punto Medio
