Playa del Carmen Tests Technology to Recover Sand Lost to Sargassum

Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo — The National Tourism Development Fund (Fonatur) is setting up an Experimental Center for Sargassum Collection and Treatment in this municipality to evaluate technologies that can recover the sand removed along with the seaweed during beach cleaning, the agency’s director, Sebastián Ramírez Mendoza, said.

In posts on social media, Ramírez Mendoza explained that collecting sargassum from the shoreline can also strip away large quantities of sand and accelerate beach erosion. He said the project aims to curb that loss through processes that separate and recover the material.

The center will be used to test which technologies and procedures work best, he added. The facility is still under development, so the announcement does not yet amount to a report on results or on how much sand has been recovered.

Ramírez Mendoza recalled that two months ago President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo tasked him with coordinating the Mexican government’s strategy for responding to sargassum. He presented sand recovery as one of the objectives of the agency’s work under that mandate.

He also credited Mayor Estefanía Mercado and the team at Playa del Carmen’s Environment Department for their cooperation in getting the project off the ground. The post did not specify the investment involved, the center’s treatment capacity or a date for the tests to begin.