Planning a beach vacation to the Caribbean?

[DEyncourt]

Record amounts of sargassum seaweed are blanketing Caribbean coastlines, choking off tourism.

[obvs]

I went to Playa del Carmen a few months ago, and yeah, there was a huge quantity of seaweed. It was still a beautiful place to visit, with lots to do.

They had trucks go up and down the beach scraping it up every morning, but it's something to be aware of.

[ukimalefu]

Record amounts of sargassum seaweed are blanketing Caribbean coastlines, choking off tourism.

I haven't been to the beach in a long time. I thought I had seen a lot of that, but never that much. I mean, it's ugly and gross, especially if it touches you in the water. But, what I knew as "normal", the algae comes and go with the tides, and it takes 3 days to a week to clean up all by itself. What you do if you go to a beach and find it full of algae, is keep traveling in one direction until you find a clean beach, or clean enough. OR, you go back a week later if that's an option for you.

Again, I don't know the current conditions in the beaches I used to go.

[obvs]

What I found weird is that the seaweed tends to stay close to the shore, but if you go out, there's no seaweed farther out.

[maurvir]

What I found weird is that the seaweed tends to stay close to the shore, but if you go out, there's no seaweed farther out.

This. If you can tolerate it enough to swim about 10 yards offshore, the water will generally be pretty clear of that stuff.

[Pariah]

Is seaweed like that good for anything?

[obvs]

Seaweed has a lot of iodine. I take it daily as a supplement. I would not be surprised if that's where they're collecting it from.