Tulum Invests Millions to Combat Seaweed & Erosion Crisis

In the second quarter of 2024, Tulum City Council dedicated over 17.3 million pesos to tackle the issues of sargassum seaweed and beach erosion at this popular tourist spot in the Mexican Caribbean. The National Transparency Platform (PNT) reports that the municipal administration assigned more than 6.3 million pesos to the "Comprehensive Service for the Recovery of Sand from Sargassum Extracted from the Beaches of Tulum."

Additionally, over 5.9 million pesos were allocated to the "Comprehensive Service for the Development of the Extraordinary Sargassum Attention Program in the Federal Maritime Terrestrial Zone (Zofemat) of Tulum." More than five million pesos were invested in the "Professional Service for Monitoring Coastal Erosion for the Management, Control, Administration, Inspection, and Surveillance of Tulum's Beaches through Photogrammetric Surveying."

The sand recovery service was operational from May 24th to August 30th. The Sargassum Attention Program in Zofemat ran from May 3rd to August 30th, and the coastal erosion monitoring service was active from May 24th to June 30th, all in 2024.

Tulum municipality, located in the north-central region of the state in the Riviera Maya, is a leading tourist destination in the Mexican Caribbean. Its capital is the city of Tulum. According to the Quintana Roo Tourist Promotion Council (CPTQ), Tulum's "Felipe Carrillo Puerto" International Airport recorded 241,030 passengers in the first half of 2024. This places it second in the state, behind only Cancun International Airport, which saw 7,831,770 passengers. However, Tulum surpassed the airports of Cozumel and Chetumal, which recorded 208,784 and 103,069 passengers, respectively, from January to June of that year.