Category: Environment

It’s that time of year again in San Pedro when the sun gets hotter, the winds pick up, and the beaches start disappearing under mountains of seaweed. We’re talking about the annual sargassum invasion, and it’s hitting hard. But while high-tech solutions have come and gone, the San Pedro Town Council is going old-school: shovels, wheelbarrows, and sheer determination. Since February, they’ve been tackling the tide of seaweed head-on. News Five’s Britney Gordon takes us to the frontlines of this sandy, salty cleanup battle.

 

Britney Gordon, Reporting

Belize’s beaches are a hot spot for Easter and summer getaways—sun, sand, and sea drawing crowds from near and far. But just as the vacation buzz kicks in, so does an unwelcome guest: sargassum. This brown, smelly seaweed rolls in by the ton, covering the coastline and turning paradise into a cleanup zone. It’s stubborn, it stinks, and it’s back.

 

Valentine Rosado, Biodiversity Scientist

“It is usually around closer to Easter, summertime, you know, when the winds pick up, when the sea temperatures are higher. When everyone wants to go to the beach because it’s super hot, that’s when the sargassum is blooming out there. Right. And when the wind picks up, it is just bringing the sargassum from way out there in the Caribbean up to our shores.”

 

Most of the sargassum drifting through the Caribbean heads north toward Cancun, but some of it still finds its way to Belize. According to the latest forecast, San Pedro and Caye Caulker are expected to see heavy buildups. In response, the San Pedro Town Council has stepped up cleanup efforts and brought in biodiversity expert Valentine Rosado to help tackle the growing problem.

 

Valentine Rosado

“As an island, we have been dealing with Sargassum for, I believe we’re on year sixteen, maybe year seventeen  right now. So the. San Pedro Town Council is focused on town core, which is about a mile from the bridge all the way to the library. And that’s where the focus of the tongue console has been. My involvement has been mostly to come in and advise in figuring out how to be a lot more, um, a little bit more efficient with the cleanup, and then also to come up with some baseline information that would help us look at lessons learned here on the island, other areas and how to tackle the situation as much as possible. Because unfortunately, we get it every year, and if nothing’s done about it, then we live here, we have to smell it every year. And it’s not, it’s not a nice thing.”

 

Many strategies have been developed over the years to counteract the influx of sargassum that washes ashore annually, but many of these strategies have proven to be too costly or inefficient.  This year, the council has taken an old-school approach by increasing manpower and hitting the beaches with shovels and wheelbarrows.

 

Valentine Rosado

“The  main strategy is getting out of the water as quick as possible. I know that one of the big challenges that we keep seeing is all these solutions that people try to come up with big machinery, you know, how can we make the raso disappear? How can we have some kind of bigger effort? And from  what we have been looking at, the main thing is getting out of the water and manual is cheaper and a lot more efficient. It might not seem that way, but the thing is that it becomes overwhelming when we have areas that there’s no focus and then one day pass. Two day pass. Three day pass, and you have that whole a accumulation of sargassum. It begins to smell and it becomes, it begins to be super overwhelming.”

 

After the Sargassum is hauled out of the sea, it is transported to a deposition site to be turned into landfill.

 

Valentine Rosado

“So what we explored here is looking at what traditionally has been done with sargassum. Traditionally, you take Sargassum off the beach and use it to fill low lying areas. I’ve done a lot of research online to figure out, from a health perspective, what are the recommendations. You know, there’s concern about heavy metals coming in this sargassum, but in the absence of any other major solution, it seems like an option that is feasible and once we use it in an era where we’re not growing fruits and vegetables that we’re going to eat immediately, then the concern about heavy metals seems to not be an immediate issue right now. However, what we’re doing in the deposition site is we’re doing it as long term monitor so we know exactly where the sarum is going, and it gives us that location where you can monitor long term to really continue tracking whether there gonna be any health implications later on.”

 

What if the seaweed piling up on San Pedro’s shores could actually become something good? That’s exactly what the town council is aiming for. Instead of just clearing away the sargassum, they’re planning to transform the area into a vibrant public space for sports and recreation, turning a coastal nuisance into a community win. It’s a fresh take on an old problem, and it’s got locals talking. Britney Gordon for News Five.

 

The sargassum removal efforts will continue until the end of the season.

Former Area Representative Anthony ‘Boots’ Martinez is under fire after fencing off a piece of land that many Belize City residents once considered part of their public beachfront. The two-and-a-half-acre property, located near what was once known as Belizean Beach, has sparked public outrage. For decades, this stretch of coastline offered a rare escape for families in the Old Capital, until the Belize Coast Guard established its headquarters nearby. Even then, a portion of the beach remained open to the public—until now. Martinez’s move to enclose the land has reignited long-standing concerns about public access to coastal spaces and the privatization of once-shared community areas.

 

Anthony ‘Boots’ Martinez, Contractor

“You couldn’t, eena di last month and change, you couldn’t access here so easy. Thick with swamp and so, and been coast guard mi put up da fence, di people dehn use to come eena da next property deh and walk een through some picado road. Soh I don’t know… but in real truth, here was never a beach environment. This spot here was never a beach environment. You could see it fi yohself, if yoh look over deh yoh wah sih weh paat deh da mi beach environment. I noh have wahn difficulty with it, but I have problem when, eena my view, I guess because I da former politician or whatsoever, but I da Belizean. I da wahn investor, I da contractor, I do all kinda thing.  I da noh no big name, soh I have a difficulty with it. Dah noh like nothing ya di destroy di environment, di destroy nothing. We noh di encroach on nobody land, yoh noh di encroach pan no private property. That is… da noh like if it’s an issue environmentally, right here is environmentally sound.”

According to Martinez, the two-and-a-half-acre property, in which he is also an investor, is being developed into a tourist destination, one that he says will cater to both Belizeans and international visitors. While many residents are upset about losing access to a space they’ve enjoyed for decades, Martinez insists that the sixty-six-foot beachfront reserve remains open to the public, by boat.

 

Anthony ‘Boots’ Martinez, Contractor

“There will be a masterplan for here and we will follow all the processes in terms of the masterplan, for tourism.”

 

Isani Cayetano

“So you’re developing this piece of land for a tourism activity, a tourism business?”

 

Anthony ‘Boots’ Martinez

“Tourism activity, both locally and internationally. And, apart from that, da something weh wahn benefit the locals because the investors, some ah mi partners di she, da only like, ih wah be like five to eight dollars fi Belizean adults fi come een ya. Ih wahn got like a bouncy house water slide, everything. Children da dollar or soh, a dollar or two or sohting like that. They take into consideration also, too, that part of the property, access… you have access to the sea which belongs to government, which we believe that people have the right to use. Like, for example, this is a private property. You have the right to use the reserve, but the only thing is that you have to come by boat, nothing wrong with that.”

This week, Belize City is buzzing with ideas as passionate Belizeans from across the country come together to tackle one of our most pressing environmental challenges, plastic pollution. The non-profit group Sea of Life has launched the Plastic Solutions Academy, a three-day workshop aimed at finding real, community-driven answers to the problem of single-use plastics. With about twenty-five participants on board, the academy is equipping them with technical know-how and inspiration from both local and international experts. Their mission? To craft innovative proposals that can help restore Belize’s waters and protect our marine ecosystems.

 

Paulita Bennett-Martin, Director of Programs, Sea of Life

“We have people from all over Belize that have traveled in to spend three days together to study plastic pollution, learn about the technical side of what plastics are made from, what sorts of threats they create to nature and our own health and then the people are challenged to come up with a solution. So a business solution. Of those solutions that are presented at the end of the three days, there’s potential for two of them to become funded projects, as well as have two years of mentoring from either BELTRAIDE or Sea of Life.”

 

Britney Gordon

“And who are some of the speakers that are here today offering their mentorship and advice?”

 

Paulita Bennett-Martin

“Yeah, we have Stephen Sangster from the University of Belize. We also have a woman from Rare that’s joining us from Washington, DC online. We have Phil Karp, who is retired from the World Bank and has worked a lot on plastic portfolio work across the world. And then we have Sea of Life speaking as well. And Delmer Tzib, also from the University of Belize who’ll be really connecting us with our roots and talking a lot about natural materials that are bounty full across Belize. And what we used to use before single use plastics.”

 

Britney Gordon

“So can you tell me a little bit about how you guys have really Belize-ified this this workshop that’s happening here? How do you make it so that it’s applicable to the people that are attending?”

 

Paulita Bennett-Martin

“Absolutely. So we really try to take a nice deep dive in day one we’ll be exploring all of the different natural materials that are a bounty full of cross ize, and then we do some mind mapping. So what is it that we have here that could replace single use plastics.”