The Washington Post - 19.08.2019

A8 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.MONDAY, AUGUST 19 , 2019

The World

INDIA

Kashmir clampdown

persists in wide areas

Restrictions continued in
much of Indian-administered
Kashmir on Sunday, despite
India’s government saying it was
gradually restoring phone lines
and easing a security lockdown
that has been in place for nearly
two weeks.
Soldiers manned nearly
deserted streets and limited the
movement of the few pedestrians
who came out of their homes in
Srinagar, the region’s main city.
The security crackdown and a
news blackout were installed

following an Aug. 5 decision by

India’s Hindu nationalist

government to downgrade the

Muslim-majority region’s

autonomy. Authorities started

easing restrictions Saturday.

But the Press Trust of India

news agency said authorities

reimposed restrictions in parts of

Srinagar after violence was

reported the same day.

Public buses started operating

in some rural areas of Indian-

controlled Kashmir on Saturday.

Cellphone and Internet services

resumed in some districts, but

reportedly only in the Hindu-

dominated Jammu region, which

did not see anti-India protests.

— Associated Press

Russian opposition figure

freed, then rearrested: A

prominent Russian opposition

figure was detained by police

immediately after leaving a jail

where he had served two

sentences connected to protests

in Moscow. Ilya Yashin is one of

the independent and opposition

politicians who has been denied

a place on the Sept. 8 ballot for

Moscow’s city council election.

Their exclusion has sparked a

string of protests. Yashin was

initially jailed July 29 for 10 days

for taking part in an

unauthorized rally, then

detained upon his release and

sentenced to 10 more days for

calling for another protest.

Israeli troops kill 3 at border,

Gaza says: Israeli troops killed

three Palestinians and severely

wounded a fourth near the Gaza

Strip’s heavily guarded perimeter

fence, the Gaza Health Ministry

said. The Israeli military said a

helicopter and a tank fired at

armed suspects near the fence

overnight. After weeks of calm,

Palestinian militants have

attempted a number of raids in

recent days. They fired rockets

into Israel twice over the

weekend, wounding no one.

Israel struck Hamas targets in

response, causing no casualties.

Aid group rejects Spain’s offer

to stranded migrants: A Spanish

charity operating a migrant

rescue ship stranded off Italy

rejected an offer from Spain to

dock in Algeciras, saying that the

100-plus people on board were in

an emergency situation and that

it would take too long to reach

Spain. The migrants had been

picked up by the Open Arms off

Libya in the past two weeks and

have been waiting to disembark

on the southern Italian island of

Lampedusa. Italy’s interior

minister, Matteo Salvini, has

blocked them from leaving the

boat, although 27 minors were

allowed off Saturday. Open Arms

said a few migrants had jumped

off to swim to shore but were

caught by rescuers and returned.

Opposition protests banned in

Zimbabwe: Zimbabwe police

banned an anti-government

demonstration planned for

Monday by the country’s main

opposition party in the city of

Bulawayo, citing potential

“public disorder.” Police

prohibited another protest

planned by the Movement for

Democratic Change in Harare on

Friday, when they chased

opposition supporters from the

capital’s streets with tear gas and

arrested dozens. The MDC

accuses President Emmerson

Mnangagwa’s government of

repression and mismanagement

amid an economic crisis.

— From news services

DIGEST

BY MARY BETH SHERIDAN

IN TULUM, MEXICO

It started washing ashore in
the Caribbean eight years ago,
the smelly, yellow-brown sea-
weed known as sargassum.
Then, just as mysteriously, it
disappeared.
Now the avalanche of algae is
becoming an annual event —
with increasingly dire conse-
quences.
This year, tons of the seaweed
have fouled white-sand beaches
from Miami to Mexico’s Mayan
Riviera. Local officials are fret-
ting about economic fallout. Sci-
entists are warning of harm to
the largest reef system in the
Americas. In some places, the
famously clear Caribbean water
turns so murky it resembles
gas-station coffee.
“It’s a little bit disgusting,”
said Sara Fargeas, 29, a French
tourist, wrinkling her nose at the
stench from piles of decaying
sargassum.
Fargeas and her husband were
sunbathing one recent day on
Playa Paraiso in the Mexican
resort of Tulum, but it was
anything but paradise. The wa-
ter was too choked with bristly
weeds to swim. “It’s disappoint-
ing,” she said.
The scale of the sargassum
invasion is immense. In the past
three months, more than 57,
tons has been raked and scooped
up on Mexico’s Caribbean coast
alone. Even the Mexican navy
has joined the battle, sending
ships to fish the seaweed out of
the water.
“You reach a point where you
can’t keep up,” said Lucila Rodri-
guez, who manages a beachfront
luxury-tent hotel in Tulum. By
mid-July, business was so slow
the hotel closed its restaurant.
The sargassum is highly un-
predictable, its movement de-
pendent on the winds and cur-
rents. In late July, the onslaught
of seaweed suddenly eased along
the Mexican coast, disappearing
in some areas. But by mid-
August, it was again sullying
many of the country’s loveliest
beaches.
Sargassum has been noted
since the days of Christopher
Columbus. But until recently,
it stayed largely in the expanse of
the North Atlantic off the U.S.
coast known as the Sargasso Sea.
Scientists were stunned this
year to see the algae had grown
so explosively that it had formed
a 5,500-mile archipelago span-
ning the Atlantic, from West
Africa to the Gulf of Mexico.
The sargassum has been inun-
dating coasts from Florida to the
French Caribbean. But this year,
it’s hit Mexico particularly hard,
inflicting pain on everything
from $800-a-night hotels to flip-
flop-casual beach restaurants.
“Who’s going to eat here with
the smell?” asked Manuel
Vasquez, 36, a waiter at one such
restaurant in Playa del Carmen.
A rotten-egg odor wafted from
piles of blackened seaweed.
Scientists worry the damage
could go well beyond the tourist
industry. They say the coastline
itself could be in jeopardy. That’s
because sargassum is weakening
the coral reefs that serve as a
buffer to waves, and the sea grass
that anchors the sand.
That means future hurricanes
could take increasingly big bites
out of Caribbean beaches, said
Brigitta van Tussenbroek, a ma-
rine biologist at Mexico’s Nation-
al Autonomous University.
“It’s still really difficult for
people to understand the magni-
tude of the problem,” she said.
If anyone understands the size
of the problem, it should be the
government of Quintana Roo,
home to Cancun and the lush,

70-mile Riviera Maya. The state’s

beaches and ancient ruins pull in

around $14 billion a year — more

than half of Mexico’s tourism

earnings.

Officials here have declared

a state of emergency — they’ve

called sargassum an “imminent

national disaster” — and

are spending $30 million to

remove it.

The state tourism minister,

Marisol Vanegas, says there

haven’t been mass cancellations

at beach hotels. But along the

Riviera Maya, businesses have

been hit hard — even the fanciest

properties.

One resort north of Tulum

charges upward of $700 a night.

It’s 50 acres of pure luxury,

including a jungle crisscrossed

with pristine paths and spacious

rooms with champagne bars and

solariums.

The property hugs a quiet

white-sand cove, where the wa-

ter is normally “as clear as a

swimming pool,” its manager

said. But one recent sunny day,

workers with rakes were fighting

a losing battle with the yellow-

brown seaweed lapping up on

the beach.

The hotel normally takes in

around $50,000 a week in the

summer, the manager said, but

revenue in recent months has

dropped by more than half. He

asked that neither he nor the

hotel be identified, to avoid fur-

ther cancellations.

Scientists are only beginning

to figure out what’s causing the

massive bloom. A key culprit,

they believe, is the increased

flow of nutrients such as nitro-

gen and phosphorus into the

ocean. Those are superfood for

sargassum.

One suspected source is fer-

tilizer washed into the Ama-

zon and then the ocean, due to

increased farming and defores-

tation in Brazil. But nature could

also be contributing to the sar-

gassum bloom — with strong

winds churning up nutrient-rich

material from the ocean floor off

West Africa.

It’s difficult to predict which

beaches will be hardest hit.

But there’s little doubt among

scientists that the onslaught will

continue. As the algae dies off

each fall, it leaves behind seeds

that bloom the following season.

“Most years in the next decade

we will see a lot of sargassum,”

said Chuanmin Hu, the oceanog-

rapher at the University of South

Florida who led the study map-

ping the giant sargassum belt.

In the open ocean, researchers

say, sargassum can be beneficial,

providing a habitat for fish,

crabs and turtles.

But once it approaches the

shore, everything changes.

“It’s a major socio-ecological

catastrophe,” said Jesús Ernesto

Arias, who analyzes Mexico’s

coral reefs at Cinvestav, a gov-

ernment-backed research cen-

ter.

The mats of algae block the

light that corals need to grow.

And as the sargassum decom-

poses, it releases hydrogen sul-

fide and ammonium, which kill

flora and fauna in the sea. Re-

searchers recently found that at

least 78 species had been affect-

ed, with fish, sea cucumbers,

crabs and other marine organ-

isms dying.

Scientists suspect the seaweed

is contributing to the spread of

white syndrome, a disease that

has destroyed 30 percent or

more of some coral species in

Mexico over the past year.

But that’s not all. The sargas-

sum kills sea grass — sort of an

underwater meadow that holds

sand and sediment in place. If

both coral reefs and sea grass are

damaged, hurricanes can whisk

away bigger chunks of beach.

More than 10,000 workers

and volunteers have been rak-

ing, scooping and hauling the

sargassum from Mexico’s beach-

es this year. Floating barriers

have been installed to try to trap

the weed.

Mexican officials have boasted

of the success of their cleanup

operations.

“I hope that in short order,

we’ll be able to say that the

problem is solved, although of

course it will require constant

attention,” President Andrés

Manuel López Obrador told re-

porters this month.

But researchers say the algae

was simply swept to other areas

by climatic conditions. It’s been

returning to some beaches in

recent days.

“It’s very likely that huge

amounts of the sargassum will

return next year,” said Arias, the

biologist. “This is a multination-

al problem. And it’s critical.”

[email protected]

Gabriela Martinez and Sebastian

Fleming-Dresser in Mexico City

contributed to this report.

Summer seaweed invasion taking a toll on Mexico

PHOTOS BY ALEJANDRO CEGARRA FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

Equator

AFRICA

NORTH

AMERICA

SOUTH AMERICA

Source: Mengqiu Wang and Chuanmin Hu, College of Marine Science THE WASHINGTON POST

at University of South Florida, and NASA

Atlantic

Ocean

Areas where satellites

have detected sargassum

Sargassum’s immense scale and foul smell threaten region’s tourism industry, coral reefs and coastline

ABOVE: A child covers his nose because of the rotten-egg odor of

the seaweed along the shore in Playa del Carmen, Mexico.

BELOW: Street musicians rest near an empty restaurant at the

beach in Playa del Carmen. Beach businesses, which pull in a big

share of Mexico’s tourism earnings, have been hit hard.