As published on The Yucatán Times on Saturday June 8th, a large sargassum stain four times larger than the city of Merida was approaching the shores of Yucatán, but fortunately the “great stain” is moving away towards the north of the Gulf of Mexico.
It should be mentioned that Yucatán does not have an Interinstitutional Committee or Network for Attention to the Macro Algae Contingency in the Yucatecan Coasts, the only local institution that studies algae is the Merida Unit of the Center for Research and Advanced Studies ( Cinvestav).
State authorities did not consider a monitoring committee a priority, because they said that arrival of marine algae was not as significant as in the case of Quintana Roo.
But the good news are that the coast of Yucatan will remain free of sargassum, and CINVESTAV is constantly monitoring the coasts. In fact specialists stated that “the possibility of an important amount of sargassum reaching the Yucatan coast is very remote”.
2 days ago, the head of the Sargasso Monitoring Network of Cancun, Esteban Amaro Mauricio, said that a sargassum spot would spread over 120 kilometers of Yucatecan coastline.
The “great stain” exceeds 4 times the size of the city of Mérida, and it can be clearly seen in the satellite image. However, winds from the south, and variations of the currents dragged the huge spot to the north, leaving the beaches of Yucatan clear from the algae.
Sargazo can be seen on the beaches of Progreso and other coastal municipalities of the Yucatan, but not in the magnitude that was expected in the coming days.
The Yucatan Times Newsroom