Mexico
Mexico and Poland play out 0-0 in group thrown open by Argentina’s defeat
Poland had to settle for a 0-0 draw Tuesday at the FIFA World Cup after Robert Lewandowski’s second-half penalty attempt was saved by Mexico goalkeeper Guillermo Ochoa.
It was the second Group C match on the day. In the first match, Saudi Arabia stunned two-time champions Argentina by 2-1.
Before today’s match, Lewandowski never missed a penalty for the national team. Poland’s all-time leading scorer with 76 goals remains without a World Cup goal.
Read more: FIFA World Cup 2022: Messi seeks history with Argentina
The Poland forward was awarded the penalty following a VAR review after Hector Moreno got hold of his shirt and pulled him down. Ochoa, playing in his fifth World Cup, came up yelling in celebration after his stop, sending the crowd into chants of “Memo!”
While Mexico dominated possession, Poland goalkeeper Wojciech Szczesny turned away all three of El Tri’s shots on goal.
The scoreless draw was good for Argentina, which was upset by Saudi Arabia 2-1 in an earlier Group C match. The Argentines, led by Lionel Messi, were widely considered to be the favorites to advance.
Read more: Mexico goalkeeper Ochoa joins 5-World Cups club
Saudi Arabia are currently at the top of Group C with one win in one match. Argentina are at the bottom with no points after one match.
Mexico goalkeeper Ochoa joins 5-World Cups club
Mexico goalkeeper Guillermo Ochoa says people still come up to him on the street to gush about his performance in the 2014 World Cup against Brazil.
Ochoa made six saves in the scoreless draw with Brazil, which was among the favorites as the tournament’s host. He even denied Brazilian star Neymar on a header and afterward called it the “game of a lifetime.”
“I feel really grateful to be recognized globally, that means you have done good work,” Ochoa said Tuesday.
A towering fixture on Mexico’s roster since 2005, the 6-foot goalkeeper recalled the match eight years ago as he prepared to play in his fifth World Cup. Mexico opens the tournament on Tuesday against Poland in Group C. Argentina and Saudi Arabia are also in the group.
Read more: Meet Caramelo, Mexico's super fan who has attended 10 World Cups
“I have seen how he plays in the World Cups and he has always been a genius. I especially remember what happened in 2014 and, to be honest, he is an excellent goalkeeper, with a lot of experience, Poland goalkeeper Wojciech Szczesny said.
Guardado and Ochoa hold the distinction of being the first teammates to play together in five straight World Cups.
Both made their debuts with the Mexican national team on Dec. 14, 2005, a 2-0 friendly victory over Hungary.
“I think that by being in my fifth World Cup I am lucky,” Ochoa said through an interpreter. “On top of that, being in a World Cup is never easy for a footballer. There are great players throughout history who don’t have the opportunity. For me, playing in five has been wonderful.”
Mexico has appeared in the last eight World Cups and has advanced to the knockout round in the last seven.
Mexico also has oldest player at the World Cup, fellow goalkeeper Alfredo Talavera, who is 40. Ochoa is 37, while Guardado is 36.
Read more: Players who will be absent from Qatar World Cup including Haaland, Salah
Meet Caramelo, Mexico's super fan who has attended 10 World Cups
Of the thousands of Mexican fans expected to travel to Qatar for the biggest soccer tournament in the world, only one of them can boast of having attended 10 World Cups and more than 450 matches for the country’s national team: Héctor Chávez, better known as “Caramelo.”
With a black charro hat on his head, dressed in the green El Tri jersey and carrying a Mexican flag with the letters of his native state of Chihuahua embroidered on the front, “Caramelo” — which means Candy — has become a familiar sight in every stadium where the team plays in Mexico and around the world, and not only for official tournaments.
“It’s a lot of sacrifice. I would say it’s even a Via Crucis for so many games I have attended,” Chávez said in an interview with The Associated Press. “I’m talking about more than 450 national team games.”
The Mexican team, in addition to official tournaments, has a contract with U.S.-based company Soccer United Marketing that, since 2003, requires it to play at least five friendly matches on American soil.
This year alone, between friendlies and official games, Mexico has played 15 matches and only four of those were in Mexico.
“On the one hand, it hits you in the family relationship, and of course in your pocket, following the national team without missing anything and having to travel anywhere around the world implies a large financial outlay,” said Chávez, who runs a jewelry store. “It is tiring to have been doing it for more than 40 years.”
Chávez said the first national team match he attended was on Feb. 19, 1986, when Mexico faced the Soviet Union in the country’s capital. His first official match in a World Cup was that same year, on June 3 against Belgium.
It was there that the idea of starting to follow Mexico around the world was born.
“I had all the experience of Mexico ’86 and that was when I said, ‘A World Cup is a total party. I’m going to try to go to every one,’ and that’s how it was,” he said.
Although Mexico was banned from the 1990 World Cup in Italy, Chávez went to that tournament and then continued his pilgrimage through the United States in 1994, France in 1998, South Korea and Japan in 2002, Germany in 2006, South Africa in 2010, Brazil in 2014 and Russia in 2018.
Chávez studied business administration and went to his first World Cup because his father bought the tickets. He remembers going to Italy with a backpack on his shoulder and on a limited budget, but he later opened his jewelry store that helped him pay his expenses since 1994.
“I remember that when I opened my jewelry store, I was on a street where there were others on the same street and I opened an hour before and closed an hour after, in addition to working on Sundays because I had to be one step ahead,” Chávez said. “All this has been based on work. That has allowed me to travel everywhere with the national team.”
Although he does not follow all games, Chávez said he traveled to the 2012 London Olympics and the 2005 Under-17 World Cup in Peru. Mexico won both.
“I remember the game and Oribe’s (Peralta) goals against Neymar’s team and seeing the flag raised high, singing the anthem. I remember it and I get goose bumps and you cry with the same joy,” Chávez recalled of the Olympic gold-medal match. “But without a doubt the best memory is when we beat Brazil in the 1999 Confederations Cup at the Azteca Stadium with those great goals from Cuauhtémoc (Blanco).”
Following Mexico, he has also witnessed some hard moments, especially the eliminations in the round of 16, which has been the ceiling for Mexico in all World Cups since 1994.
Of those, the loss to the United States in 2002 hurt the most.
“Not so much because they eliminated us, but because our archenemy eliminated us,” Chávez said. “For years we felt superior to them and that time they humiliated us. It was a very sad day for ‘Caramelo.’ I did not want to leave the hotel for three days after that.”
In Mexico, Chávez is the only fan who follows the national team to all its matches. There is another group called the Ola Verde that does something similar, but they only travel to official tournaments around the world.
Chávez’s story is like that of Manuel Cáceres, known as “Manolo el del bombo” or “Manolo the bass drummer.” He has followed the Spanish national team since the 1982 World Cup.
“I would say that my friend ‘Manolo el del bombo’ is my closest competitor. He is a good friend, we have met and talked over the phone,” said Chávez, who mentioned that Brazilian fan Clovis Acosta Fernandes — who was known as the “Gaúcho Da Copa” but died in 2015 — also inspired him.
The Mexican soccer federation knows Chávez well. Although he pays for his own trips, he usually stays in the hotels where the national team stays. He recently shared a video on his official Instagram account in which, before getting into an elevator, he asks Mexico coach Gerardo Martino if he plans to include former national team striker Javier Hernández in the squad.
Additionally, his account is full of images in hotels next to Mexican players not only on the current roster but also from past World Cups.
“It’s not that I consider myself the No. 1 fan, but the people and the media let me know,” Chavez said. “‘Caramelo’ accepts this recognition as a responsibility because I feel like an ambassador for the Mexican fans.”
Read more: Fans without tickets can enter Qatar after World Cup group stage
Monarch butterflies return to Mexico on annual migration
The first monarch butterflies have appeared in the mountaintop forests of central Mexico where they spend the winter, Mexico’s Environment Department said Saturday.
The first butterflies have been seen exploring the mountaintop reserves in th states of Mexico and Michoacan, apparently trying to decide where to settle this year.
The monarchs have shown up a few days late this year. Normally they arrive for the Day of the Dead observances on Nov. 1 and Nov. 2. Mountainside communities long associated the orange-and-black butterflies with the returning souls of the dead.
The department said the butterflies were seen around their three largest traditional wintering grounds — Sierra Chincua, El Rosario and Cerro Pelón in Michoacan state.
The main group of butterflies is expected to arrive in the coming weeks, depending on weather conditions, the department said in a statement.
Read: Mexico questions police over disappeared butterfly activist
It is too early to say how big this year’s annual migration from the United States and Canada will be. Those counts are usually made in January, when the butterflies have settled into clumps on the boughs of fir and pine trees.
The annual butterfly count doesn’t calculate the individual number of butterflies, but rather the number of acres they cover when they clump together.
Last year, 35% more monarch butterflies arrived compared to the previous season. The rise may reflect the butterflies’ ability to adapt to more extreme bouts of heat or drought by varying the date when they leave Mexico.
Each year, generally in March, the monarchs migrate back to the United States and Canada.
Drought, severe weather and loss of habitat north of the border — especially of the milkweed where the monarchs lay their eggs — as well as pesticide and herbicide use and climate change all pose threats to the species’ migration. Illegal logging and loss of tree cover due to disease, drought and storms plague the reserves in Mexico.
Read: Butterfly on a bomb range: Endangered Species Act at work
This year, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature added the migrating monarch butterfly to its “red list” of threatened species and categorized it as “endangered” — two steps from extinct.
The group estimates the population of monarch butterflies in North America has declined between 22% and 72% over 10 years, depending on the measurement method.
The monarchs’ migration is the longest of any insect species known to science.
After wintering in Mexico, the butterflies fly north, breeding multiple generations along the way for thousands of miles. The offspring that reach southern Canada begin the trip back to Mexico at the end of summer.
Illegal border crossings to US from Mexico reach annual high
A surge in migration from Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua in September brought the number of illegal crossings to the highest level ever recorded in a fiscal year, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
The year-end numbers reflect deteriorating economic and political conditions in some countries, the relative strength of the U.S. economy and uneven enforcement of Trump-era asylum restrictions.
Migrants were stopped 227,547 times in September at the U.S. border with Mexico, the third-highest month of Joe Biden's presidency. It was up 11.5% from 204,087 times in August and 18.5% from 192,001 times in September 2021.
In the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, migrants were stopped 2.38 million times, up 37% from 1.73 million times the year before, according to figures released late Friday night. The annual total surpassed 2 million for the first time in August and is more than twice the highest level during Donald Trump's presidency in 2019.
Nearly 78,000 migrants from Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua were stopped in September, compared to about 58,000 from Mexico and three countries of northern Central America that have historically accounted for most of the flow.
The remarkable geographic shift is at least partly a result of Title 42, a public health rule that suspends rights to see asylum under U.S. and international law on grounds of preventing the spread of COVID-19.
Due to strained diplomatic relations, the U.S. cannot expel migrants to Venezuela, Cuba or Nicaragua. As a result, they are largely released in the United States to pursue their immigration cases.
Title 42 authority has been applied 2.4 million times since it began in March 2020 but has fallen disproportionately on migrants from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
U.S. officials say Venezuelan migration to the United States has plunged more than 85% since Oct. 12, when the U.S. began expelling Venezuelans to Mexico under Title 42. At the same time, the Biden administration pledged to admit up to 24,000 Venezuelans to the United States on humanitarian parole if they apply online with a financial sponsor and enter through an airport, similar to how tens of thousands of Ukrainians have come since Russia invaded their country.
The first four Venezuelans paroled into the United States arrived Saturday — two from Mexico, one from Guatemala, one from Peru — and hundreds more have been approved to fly, the Homeland Security Department said.
“While this early data is not reflected in the (September) report, it confirms what we’ve said all along: When there is a lawful and orderly way to enter the country, individuals will be less likely to put their lives in the hands of smugglers and try to cross the border unlawfully,” said CBP Commissioner Chris Magnus.
The expansion of Title 42 for Venezuelans to be expelled to Mexico came despite the administration’s attempt to end the public health authority in May, which was blocked by a federal judge.
Venezuelans represented the second-largest nationality at the border after Mexicans for the second straight month, being stopped 33,804 times in September, up 33% from 25,361 times in August.
Cubans, who are participating in the largest exodus from the Caribbean island to the United States since 1980, were stopped 26,178 times at the border in September, up 37% from 19,060 in August.
Nicaraguans were stopped 18,199 times in September, up 55% from 7,298 times in August.
The report is the last monthly reading of migration flows before U.S. midterm elections, an issue that many Republicans have emphasized in campaigns to capture control of the House and Senate. Republicans on the House Homeland Security Committee released a one-sentence statement Saturday in response to the numbers: "You’ve got to be kidding.”
200 environmental activists killed globally in 2021: Report
Some 200 environmental and land defense activists were killed around the world in 2021, including some 54 in Mexico, which assumed the position of the deadliest country in the annual report by nongovernmental organization Global Witness.
More than three-quarters of the killings took place in Latin America, where Colombia, Brazil and Nicaragua also logged double-digit death tolls.
It was the third consecutive year of increases for Mexico and a jump from 30 such activists killed in 2020.
“Most of these crimes happen in places that are far away from power and are inflicted on those with, in many ways, the least amount of power,” the report said.
Global Witness considers its report a baseline, noting “Our data on killings is likely to be an underestimate, given that many murders go unreported, particularly in rural areas and in particular countries.”
The victims died fighting resource exploitation and in land disputes. Conflicts over mining were tied to 27 deaths worldwide, the most for any sector.
Fifteen of those mining-related killings were in Mexico.
In the western Mexico state of Jalisco, José Santos Isaac Chávez was killed in April 2021. He was running for local office and had made opposition to a long-running mine a central part of his campaign. Days before the election, he was found dead in his car, which had been driven off a cliff and his body showed evidence of torture. Armed men had dragged him out of his home and driven him away in his own vehicle.
In April 2021, Sandra Liliana Peña Chocué, an Indigenous governor in southwest Colombia, who had fought for the eradication of coca crops in Caldono, Cauca was killed near her home by armed men. Her murder was condemned by the United Nations, nongovernmental organizations and foreign governments.
Overall, killings of environmental activists in Colombia dropped in 2021 to 33 from 65 the year before. The Philippines saw fewer such killings in 2021 too, 19 compared to 30 in 2020.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, all eight recorded victims were killed inside Virunga National Park.
In November, conservation park ranger Chief Brigadier Etienne Mutazimiza Kanyaruchinya, 48, was killed when 100 heavily armed men, presumed to be former members of the M23 rebel group, attacked a patrol post near the village of Bukima in Congo’s North Kivu Province.
Virunga Park is home to some of the world’s last mountain gorillas, but armed groups such as the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, known by its French acronym FDLR, the Mai-Mai and the M23 regularly vie for control of eastern Congo’s natural resources.
Global Witness called on governments to enforce laws that protect activists and require informed consent from Indigenous groups, while also requiring companies to be accountable throughout their global operations and have zero tolerance for attacks on land defenders.
“Activists and communities play a crucial role as a first line of defense against ecological collapse, as well as being frontrunners in the campaign to prevent it,” Global Witness CEO Mike Davis said in the report.
Armed assailants kill 6 at Mexico rehab center
Six people were killed by armed assailants at a drug rehabilitation center in west Mexico's Jalisco state, authorities said Monday.
Police arrived at the scene on Sunday after receiving emergency calls, but were unable to make any arrest.
Read: 4 dead after sheriff’s office helicopter crash in New Mexico
Witnesses told local media that hooded gunmen burst into the facility and opened fire.
Jalisco state is one of the most violent areas in the country and a bastion of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel. ■
2 dead in Mexico after Netflix series cast, crew van crashes
Two actors on the Netflix series The Chosen One were killed and six other cast or crew members were injured after the van they were riding in crashed near Mulege on the Baja California Sur peninsula.
Local media reported the crash occurred Thursday, and said the van flipped after running off the road in a desert area. The crew had apparently been working in the nearby Santa Rosalia area at the time.
The Baja California Department of Culture said Friday that Raymundo Garduño Cruz and Juan Francisco González Aguilar died.
READ: 3 dead as van crashes into parked tractor in Cumilla
Netflix describes The Chosen One this way: “A 12-year-old boy learns he’s the returned Jesus Christ, destined to save humankind. Based on the comic book series by Mark Millar and Peter Gross.”
According to casting calls, the series is being taped by an independent production company.
2 journalists killed in Mexico; 10th and 11th of the year
Just as Mexican journalists prepared to protest the killing of a journalist last week, word came Monday that two more were shot to death in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz, raising to 11 the number of such killings in the country this year.
The Veracruz State Prosecutor's Office said via Twitter that it was investigating the killings of Yessenia Mollinedo Falconi and Sheila Johana García Olivera, the director and a reporter, respectively, of the online news site El Veraz in Cosoleacaque.
Veracruz State Prosecutor Verónica Hernández Giadáns said the investigation would be exhaustive, including considering their journalism work as a possible motive in their killing.
The State Commission for Attention To and Protection of Journalists said the two women were attacked outside a convenience store.
“We condemn this attack on Veracruz’s journalism profession, give it prompt monitoring and have opened an investigation,” the commission said.
Their killings came on the heels of the ninth slaying of journalist this year, in the northern state of Sinaloa. Prosecutors there said Thursday that the body of Luis Enrique Ramírez Ramos was found on a dirt road near a junkyard in the state capital, Culiacan.
Also read: Russia-Ukraine war: Russian journalist killed in Kyiv shelling
Prosecutors said that his body was wrapped in black plastic and that he died from multiple blows to the head.
Ramírez Ramos’ news website, “Fuentes Fidedignas,” or “Reliable Sources,” said that he had been abducted near his house hours earlier.
The dizzying pace of killings has made Mexico the deadliest country for journalists to work outside of war zones this year.
On Monday evening, Griselda Triana, wife of Javier Valdez, a journalist slain in 2017, spoke to some 200 journalists gathered at Mexico City’s Angel of Independence monument. The demonstration had originally been scheduled to protest the killing of Ramírez Ramos and those who preceded him.
Valdez, one of Mexico’s best-known journalists killed in recent years, was an award-winning reporter who specialized in covering drug trafficking and organized crime in the northern state of Sinaloa.
“In all this time I haven’t stopped thinking about how easy it is for them to kill a journalist in Mexico,” Triana said. “I feel hurt each time they take the life of so many colleagues.”
“There’s so much anger, indignation, powerlessness knowing that we come here to protest the murder of Luis Enrique Ramírez, (that happened) a few days ago in Culiacan, Sinaloa, and the news of the killing of two women journalists in Veracruz reaches us here,” Triana said. “It’s a whirlpool. The crimes against freedom of expression keep occurring every day. We shouldn’t tolerate it. We have the authority to ask the authorities to put a stop to this slaughter of journalists.”
The victims, like those killed Monday, are most often from small, hyperlocal news outlets. El Veraz operated a Facebook page and appeared to almost exclusively post notices about events or public information from the municipality's government. El Veraz’s motto was “Journalism with Humanity.”
The phone number listed for El Veraz rang to what appeared to be Mollinedo Falconi's cell phone, according to its message.
Also read: U.S. journalist killed by attack near Kyiv
Cosoleacaque is just off a major east-west route in southeastern Veracruz. Organized crime is present in the area and involved especially in migrant smuggling, but there was no immediate indication of who could have been responsible.
Veracruz Gov. Cuitláhuac García said a search was underway for those responsible.
“We will find the perpetrators of this crime, there will be justice and there will not be impunity like we have said and done in other cases,” García said via Twitter.
Journalists had already scheduled a demonstration for Monday in Mexico City to protest killings of their colleagues, most recently that of Ramírez Ramos in Sinaloa.
Mexico’s state and federal governments have been criticized for neither preventing the killings nor investigating them sufficiently.
While organized crime is often involved in journalist killings, small town officials or politicians with political or criminal motivations are often suspects as well. Journalists running small news outlets in Mexico’s interior are easy targets.
Mexico has a protection program for journalists and human rights defenders, but it was not immediately known whether either Mollinedo Falconi or García Olivera were enrolled.
Participants receive support, such as electronic devices or “panic buttons” to alert the authorities to any threat; surveillance systems in their homes; even bodyguards in some cases. Often authorities recommend that threatened journalists move to another state or the capital to lessen the threat, but that means separating them from their work, livelihood and families.
While President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has promised a “zero impunity” program to investigate such slayings, journalists’ murders, like most homicides in Mexico, are never resolved by authorities. López Obrador has also kept up his regular verbal attacks on journalists critical of his administration.
In February, the Inter American Press Association called on the president to “immediately suspend the aggressions and insults, because such attacks from the top of power encourage violence against the press.”
In March, the European Union approved a resolution that “calls on the authorities, and in particular the highest ones, to refrain from issuing any communication which could stigmatize human rights defenders, journalists and media workers, exacerbate the atmosphere against them or distort their lines of investigation.”
Late Monday, presidential spokesman Jesús Ramírez said via Twitter that the federal and state governments would work together to investigate the killings. “The commitment is that there is not impunity.”
Mexico Caribbean beaches may see worst sargassum since 2018
Mexican authorities say the problem of foul-smelling sargassum — a seaweed-like algae — on the country's Caribbean coast beaches is “alarming.”
The arrival of heaps of brown, foul-smelling sargassum on the coast's normally pristine white sand beaches comes just as tourism is recovering to pre-pandemic levels, though job recovery in the country's top tourist destination has been slower.
With more algae spotted floating out at sea, experts fear that 2022 could be as bad or worse than the catastrophic year of 2018, the biggest sargassum wave to date.
“We can say the current situation is alarming,” said Navy Secretary José Ojeda, who has been entrusted with the apparently hopeless task of trying to gather sargassum at sea, before it hits the beaches.
The Navy currently has 11 sargassum-collecting boats operating in the area. But the Navy's own figures show that the portion they have been able to collect before it hits the beach has been falling.
In 2020, the Navy collected 4% of sargassum at sea, while 96% was raked off beaches. But that figure fell to 3% in 2021, and about 1% so far in 2022.
Allowing the algae to reach the beaches creates not only a problem for tourists, but for the environment, said Rosa Rodríguez Martínez, a biologist in the beachside town of Puerto Morelos who studies reefs and coastal ecosystems for Mexico’s National Autonomous University.
READ: Tour boat in Mexico hits whale or whale shark, 6 injured
So much algae is reaching the beaches that hotels and local authorities are using bulldozers and backhoes, because the normal teams of rakes, shovels and wheelbarrows are no longer enough.
“The heavy machinery, when it picks it (sargassum) up, takes a large amount of sand with it,” contributing to beach erosion, Rodriguez Martinez said. “There is so much sargassum that you can't use small-scale equipment anymore, you have to use the heavy stuff, and when the excavators come in, they remove more sand.”
Rodríguez Martinez worries that 2022 could be worse than 2018, the previous peak year. “In the last few days there have been amounts washing up, and in places, that I didn't see even in 2018,” she said.
However, the University of South Florida Optical Oceanography Lab said in a report that “2022 is likely going to be another moderate or major sargassum year,” with observable amounts in all waters lower than in 2018 and 2021.
But given the vagaries of ocean currents, it may just be a very bad year for Mexico. Rodríguez Martinez is already suffering the effects herself, at her beachside offices.
“Where I am, I'm about 50 meters (yards) from the beach and the smell is very unpleasant,” she said. “Right now my head is hurting and another friend said her head hurts, and I said it must be the (hydrogen) sulfide gas from the sargassum, no?”
The problem comes just as resorts like Cancun, Playa del Carmen and Tulm are recovering from the brutal two-year drop in tourism caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Not all beaches have been hit equally; many in Cancun and Isla Mujeres are often free of much sargassum, but much of the Riveria Maya has been hit hard.
Carlos Joaquin, governor of the coastal state of Quintana Roo, said the number of tourists arriving by air so far this year — some 3.54 million travelers — is 1.27% above 2019 levels, before the pandemic. But Joaquin said that only about 83% of the 98,000 jobs lost during the pandemic have returned.
Sergio León, the former head of the state's employers' federation, said the seaweed invasion “has definitely affected us, it has affected our image on the domestic and international level. Obviously, not just visually, but in term of environmental damage and pain.”
“The Navy is making an effort, but it needs more, it isn't enough,” said León. “The ideal thing would be to gather it before it gets to our beaches.”
Rodriguez Martinez said that, given the limited number of Navy boats and funds, the best solution might be to hang floating offshore barriers and collect the sargassum in waters closer to the shore.
But she notes another problem: what to do with the thousands of tons of stinking algae collected each year, mainly by private hotel owners. Some have simply been tossing the mounds collected from the beach into disused limestone quarries, where the salt and minerals collected in the ocean can leech into groundwater.
Other simply toss into woodlands or mangrove swamps, which is equally as bad.
“The algae has a lot of salt ... so that is not good, even for palm trees, which are pretty salt resistant,” she noted.
While some have tried to use sargassum to create bricks or fertilizer, the lack of official policies and long term plans make it hard to obtain big investments for such plans.
Initial reports in the 2010s suggested the masses of seaweed came from an area of the Atlantic off the northern coast of Brazil, near the mouth of the Amazon River. Increased nutrient flows from deforestation or fertilizer runoff could be feeding the algae bloom.
But other causes may contribute, like nutrient flows from the Congo River, increased upwelling of nutrient-laden deeper ocean water in the tropical Atlantic and dust blowing in from Africa.