Royal Caribbean is right to keep collecting in Mahahual

Royal Caribbean Group removed 977 metric tons of sargassum from Mahahual’s reef lagoon in five months. Now it is adding a third collection boat. I give the expansion more weight than the tonnage total: this is a recurring coastal problem, and continuing the work is the useful decision.

The company and local nonprofit Menos Plastico es Fantastico are moving into a second phase that will run through November. Expanding the fleet from two boats to three will extend an operation designed to intercept floating seaweed before it reaches the shoreline.

There is an obvious business interest here. Mahahual, in Quintana Roo, sits beside the Costa Maya cruise port and is the site of Royal Caribbean’s planned Perfect Day Mexico, scheduled to open in 2027. The destination is set to include a waterpark, several beach areas, a large freshwater pool and a mile-long lazy river.

That commercial interest does not diminish the value of the cleanup. It makes sustained involvement a reasonable expectation. The condition of the surrounding coast deserves attention well beyond the construction schedule.

A working waterfront, not just a future attraction

Mahahual already has a visitor economy tied to the water. Its waterfront lies roughly two to three miles from the cruise port, near the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef, with snorkeling and diving trips departing from the beach area.

Unusually extensive and frequent sargassum accumulations have affected Caribbean and tropical Atlantic coastlines since 2011. Winds and currents carry large mats westward into the Caribbean. Once stranded, deposits can obstruct beach access and interfere with swimming, snorkeling, fishing and boating.

Across affected destinations, the odors and loss of beach access can hurt restaurants, vendors and boat operators. Those are practical reasons to support continued collection, quite apart from how a future cruise destination will look in photographs.

Inside the first phase

During the first phase, crews concentrated much of their work around El Quebrado, gathering sargassum with boats and nets. They took it to designated locations for drying and processing, where waste and other material were separated out.

The effort used 3,054 collection nets and yielded 560 sacks of dried sargassum. Royal Caribbean says potential uses for that material remain under consideration. Collection has produced a measurable result. A useful destination for the dried material is still unfinished business.

The boat operation supplements barriers and anchoring infrastructure already installed near Mahahual’s pier. Separately, Royal Caribbean has supported repositioning and extending the barrier system, providing new anchors and technical equipment in cooperation with the Mahahual Sargassum Committee and Mexico’s Secretariat of the Navy.

The goal cannot be to remove every trace of seaweed

Sargassum is also habitat. NOAA describes floating sargassum offshore as a source of food, shelter and nursery space for marine organisms. Teams in Mahahual recorded juvenile triggerfish, sargassum frogfish, sargassum crabs and sargassum shrimp in the collected material.

More tons removed cannot, by itself, be the whole measure of success. The concern along the coast is excessive accumulation, where thick deposits can block light and consume oxygen as they decompose, damaging coral reefs, seagrass and other habitats. Heavy deposits can also obstruct sea-turtle nesting and movement.

Crews also removed and documented larger pieces of plastic encountered during collection. The next phase will cover the navigation channel from central Mahahual to the Quebrado Norte entrance, retrieve abandoned nets from the seabed and remove waste accumulated around sargassum nets.

That is less glamorous work than building a mile-long lazy river, and I would rather see it treated as a lasting responsibility than a pre-opening project. November is the next milestone. For a company planning to open here in 2027, it should not be the finish line.