Stinky, rotting algae mats are piling up on beaches across the South Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea as tourism officials try to cope with a record sargassum bloom.
Sargassum, historically confined to the Sargasso Sea in the North Atlantic, began showing up in regions further south in 2011; the 2026 sargassum bloom is one of the worst ever, according to researchers at the University of South Florida.
“The Caribbean Sea continued to show record-high sargassum amount for the month of June, and the total Sargassum amount in the Gulf reached five million metric tons, which nearly doubled the historical record in 2025,” according to a June 30 report from the university’s College of Marine Science. “As a result, severe beaching events have been reported along the southeast coast of Florida. Likewise, beaching events have also continued around the Caribbean and Lesser Antilles islands.”
In Mexico’s Riviera Maya region, tourism officials are calling on the government to declare an emergency as visitors are canceling trips due to reports of beaches fouled by sargassum.
“Summer vacation is just around the corner and we can’t promote a destination covered in sargassum,” said Andrea Lotito, VP of the Riviera Maya Hotel Association. “The beaches need to be restored to regain the confidence of tourist markets.”
Record levels of sargassum have also been reported in Key West, and beaches from Panama City to Miami Beach also have been covered in mats of algae.
Cleanup requires a laborious effort of raking, collecting and carting off tons of sargassum even as new mats wash ashore. But addressing the root causes of sargassum blooms require a much broader effort, experts say.
“This is the new normal,” Florida Atlantic University Harbor Branch research professor Brian Lapointe told NBC News. “What we’re seeing here is truly a crisis,” with deforestation in the Amazon watershed and expansion of agriculture and fertilizer use fueling the algae blooms, he said.
Rising temperatures also contribute to the problem. “It’s really a symptom of climate change and warming oceans and pollution building up in the ocean,” said Miami Waterkeeper CEO Rachel Silverstein. “And that together is causing these essentially blooms of algae.”
