Hi, irina,

I know you already know this having lived there as long as you did, but there's seaweed, and then there's SEAWEED.

When we were on SXM mid April to early May there was seaweed around the island like I've never before seen in all the 42+ years we've been going there. Coming in to land, from the plane it looked like the water as far as you could see was coated with an oil slick or something equally icky but the closer we came, we realized it wasn't oil but (so we were advised after a few days of being there and asking about it) the (in)famous Sargasso seaweed we'd already been made aware of .

It wasn't always on the beaches themselves or even close in to them, and the various impacted beaches seemed to change from day to day, probably driven by the winds and the tides.

We were at Mullet a few times and the beach didn't have a blade of seaweed to be seen and one other day we went it was disgusting. We could actually see it laying in the water at Mullet Beach from our balcony at the Towers.

We went to Marys Boon twice as Boonies for the day and it was okay - no problem getting in and out of the water and it really didn't have much impact on swimming - yet by the time we'd relocated at the end of our trip to stay on the beach at BSV, the seaweed was really bad. They raked and bagged it every morning so the beach was relatively clean for the most part, but even going in and out of the water was not inviting for several of the days we were there.

The day we took our around the island boat tour, the seaweed was very heavy in some areas and almost non-existent in others. Literally, like nothing I'd ever seen before and for sure, not the normal seaweed you'd typically expect to see there. <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/handshake.gif" alt="" /> <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/handshake.gif" alt="" />