The photos above are a few I just pulled from my phone that I took this summer while playing on the beach. I just read an article (one of a great many at the moment) where they described sargassum as “Choking the Caribbean?”. The PR surrounding sargassum is horrible and we need to get our heads out of the weed/sand and start to be more careful and more sensible about the issue. I go to the beach almost daily and it’s almost never the same one, but I haven’t been on a beach with sargassum this year. Those windward beaches are undoubtedly having a hard time but the notion that the Caribbean is a disaster area as seems to be the collective assumption is unfortunate. We are extremely lucky here to have a diverse and protected coastline. MOST of our “365 beaches” have no sargassum on them at all, and MOST of our hotels have no issue from sargassum. PLEASE STOP MAKING IT SOUND AS THOUGH ANTIGUA IS IN THE MIDDLE OF A SARGASSUM DISASTER. If your favorite beach has too much weed on it, then go a mile around the coast and find a protected one free of weed. This hysteria is causing our economy problems. You can’t go to a few windward facing beaches and judge the island by those beaches. Go have a look around. Unlike some of our neighboring islands, we are very lucky here in Antigua with the majority of our beaches being weed free. That brings up another thought. There are certain Caribbean islands being affected worse than we are because of their geography and it’s in their benefit for us join with them in raising funds to “fight” this climate change phenomenon. The article below says leaders said it would take 100+ million US dollars to “clean up” and I am sure that places like Barbados would need the bulk of that. The knee jerk reaction mentality on this thing is scary. I have heard big developers and resorts coming up with various ideas to help manage their problem and there’s no doubt they need to do something, but we need to be very careful. For example, I spoke with a property owner down current of another property who is ready to take legal action the day he sees a “boom” being installed. He feels that his property will be negatively affected. Anyway, my main point is to say that this climate change sargassum sargassum situation is bad but not the Caribbean wide or Antigua wide “disaster” that they hype would have you believe. People are surprised when they see beaches without a spec of weed on them. Let’s not spread the hype. Antigua and Barbuda is open for biz and has plenty of beaches untouched by weed.
The few hotels being affected here need help from government, but it’s not as bad as the hype makes it sound. If you’re still not convinced…… Take our Xtreme Circumnavigation tour and go right around the island. See for yourself how beautiful Antigua is today and remind people that we are not a disaster area!!!!! Below is the link to the #robertscribbler article which is one of many that are spreading negative hype. Don’t believe the hype.
robertscribbler.com/…/massive-sargasso-seaweed-bloom-is-ch…/