We have featured stories on the sargassum plague countless times on this newscast. In the beginning of this year, we told you about CRFM's fact finding study to find out how and why it is affecting the Caribbean. Well, while that study is being conducted, residents on the ground in Belize especially on the islands and coastal communities have to deal with the unsightly heaps and unbearable stench of the sargassum as it accumulates and decays on the beach.
As you can imagine, it's having a direct effect on the tourism product and properties. We spoke to the Reservations Manager at The Palms Ocean Front Property on San Pedro and she told us that it is getting harder to control and it is jeopardizing their business.
Ana Ico, The Palms Ocean Front Property Reservations Manager
"Well San Pedro has a real serious problem with Sargassum because first we used to have enough sargassum and people used to use it for landfill but now the amounts are really a lot that now we don't even have the human resource to come and get it off the beach as quickly as we would like it to be off and not only that when it starts to decompose or rotten, then you have that smell and of course people are allergic to it and they start coughing and that stuff, all our metals start getting black and so it is affecting us a lot especially on our beaches because they are starting to erode. I don't know if you walk the beaches it is starting to erode a lot and I have never seen our beaches in front of the Palm's as bad as they are now."
"The tourists want to come here to enjoy the beaches and if you go there right now you can't enjoy the beaches because it is piled up and what they do is go on the west side of the island and try to go to spots that are there instead of staying where they are and paying that amount of money to get that view and the beach so you know it is affecting us both ways."
"What I know is BTB had asked us to take a percentage of the tax that is what we use to pay the people to rake the beach and take away the sargassum, however mother nature seems to be real mad at us so it is more than we can actually handle with what we have right now."
Ico says the sargassum is worse on the north side of the island.
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