Sea weed status

We are headed to SXM in early December and we were wondering how bad the beaches are with sea weed? We had heard it was bad for a while but haven't heard much about it lately. Is Orient OK?

The last I heard the seaweed was gone from Orient. That was about a week ago. I haven't heard anything since then about Orient or any of the other beaches.

Right now seaweed (sargassum) is not bad. See some patches floating by from out vantage point overlooking Baie Lucas, east end. AZRanger said today that there was some fresh build-up at Mt Vernon orient beach, workers on it. Overall seems not too bad.
Walked up as far as Kahko today and no sargassum seen.
Gotta put in a new call on the construction - Oct 2016.

I was in Simpson bay and Orient beach last Friday thru Tuesday and the sea weed situation is not bad at all...I suppose a lot can change between now and DEC...but it is AOK right now

There was a large build-up yesterday on the north end of Orient Beach. A tractor with a landscape rake attachment is working in front of Mt Vernon as I write this. It did the middle part of the beach (Kon Tiki to Waikiki) earlier this morning. Palm Beach has been doing their own part of the beach on a regular basis but has not started yet today.
The saga continues.

I forgot to mention that there has been a crew of 5-6 men working in front of Mt Vernon the past 4 days with rakes, pitchforks, and wheelbarrows trying to keep up with the new accumulation each morning. They had it pretty well clean yesterday but it all came back last night.
The point is that significant effort is being made to address the problem and it would be much worse without all that is being done. There is no odor problem on Orient like there is at the Pinel Island ferry terminal in Cul de Sac.

Does anyone have a report on the sargassum at Caribbean Paddling near the dock to Pinel? or on the north beach of Pinel? or at Coralita Beach?

My wife and I will be celebrating our 30th wedding anniversary with our first trip to The Friendly Island, staying in French Oyster Pond 11/7-11/21!

Palm Beach just started working on their portion of the beach.

The odor in the vicinity of the dock was terrible last week. Due to the prevailing winds the island should not be getting any of it.

This article paints a pretty dire picture of the overall Caribbean problem…

Currently in a unit overlooking ocean and current heading into Coralita beach. Some amounts of sargassum floating in. Coralita beach has quite a bit of accumulation and sometimes mats of the stuff floating in the waves. No clean-up so it just sits there. A few sections of the beach are free but most covered.

Regardless of how it is today or tomorrow, there is a good chance it will be totally different in early December and will likely change day by day.

That's a good thing!