TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums St. Maarten - St. Martin Sargassum weed increasing

LINK

This looks really bad now.

Wow..............that's disgusting! We are scheduled for a visit in February (in Cul de Sac). Now I'm worried.

Wow, yes, that is disgusting. Especially in the summer, no way I would stay in Cul de Sac or Dawn Beach, which seem to usually get the worst of it..

RickandJulie,

I wouldn’t worry too much about it until you are about two weeks away from your trip. The Sargassum comes and goes on a fairly regular basis over the last couple of years and even if it’s where you are, chances are pretty good you can find a beach on the diagonal other side of the island that will be good and sargassum free. Or at least, that’s usually been our experience.

We typically go in April/May and Nov./Dec. and it’s usually not a problem although there was that one late April trip……….OMgoodness. But we always found another option if our first choice wasn’t great.

"I wouldn’t worry too much about it until you are about two weeks away from your trip."
It would be pretty tough trying to find different accomodations two weeks before you go in February. I wouldn't take that chance.

Just in time for our trip next week. Hopefully they will be raking orient beach as usual.

Wow....that is beyond being able to be raked up

When driving back from Anse Marcel, coming down the hill on Sunday, that's exactly what I saw. Just a huge area of ugly brown.

To somewhat quote a famous movie quote "We're going to need a BIGGER rake". I mean a really BIG RAKE.

Now that is a s$&tload of seaweed. They will need a fleet of tractors, dumptrucks and an incinerator.

Too bad for cul de sac but selfishly i hope it stays confined there for next few weeks.

We are here now. Yes the sea weed is bad, we have had a great day everyday. They are raking everyday on Orient.

Gotta love "island time". The news story says they will convene an "urgent meeting" but not until next week!

Raking all of Orient, or just Club O?

Don’t know about all of orient just club o.

Some of my questions are. How far out is this stuff traveling from that it builds up in droves? How can it be prevented from making land fall??? What is the Department of tourism doing about this??? If they want travelers to enjoy the beaches they need to clean this all up (buy the right equipment) and have the renters maintain it during the day! We were there a few months ago, not every renter was ranking nor did they have the "man" power to stay ahead of it!!

We stayed on the Mayan Riviera in Mexico October 2019 and had a real problem with this. We couldn't swim in the ocean at all. The smell was terrible. We said we would never go back there again because of it.

Our friend Teresa walks all of Orient. She said they are raking most of it. They use the big tractor at club O.

Sounds pretty bad right now. We were at Orient Beach this past April, and the tractor couldn't keep up with it. The key for us was to be flexible. We started going to Happy Bay instead and there was no sargassum. Generally, it is the eastern facing beaches that get the most. Too bad you can't smoke it. That would get rid of it fast!!!!!