Sargassum is no longer just a tourist plague; today it defines agreements, technologies, and regional power.
The second installment in this series raises the big question of the sustainability of tourism in the Dominican Republic. (2 of 5)
SANTO DOMINGO– Lidia traveled from Madrid to Punta Cana for her vacation. She thought her hotel was great and went to the beach early, looking for the picture-perfect view she'd seen at the travel agency. As she passed the beach club, she noticed a foul, nauseating smell carried by a gust of wind. She gathered her towel and a few meters further on, she found a crew of workers piling up trash with shovels and a mechanical rake. Her enthusiasm vanished when she scanned the horizon from left to right and saw that the entire beach was brown.
To the Caribbean's already vibrant colors, we must now add this one: the brown of sargassum seaweed, which arrives from the Atlantic by the ton, pushed by warmer waters and fueled by pollution, as experts warn. This phenomenon, like hurricanes, is now among the region's major risks, as it invades beaches, scares away tourists, keepshotel owners, fishermen, and governments awake at night, and leaves an estimated $200,000 in cleanup costs.
More than that, sargassum has ceased to be merely an environmental problem and has transformed into a geopolitical battleground. It has been the subject of international conferences, summits of foreign ministers, technological alliances, and multimillion-dollar investments. And, as with any strategic resource, disputes and tensions are not lacking.
The enthusiasm generated by the possibility of profiting from the invasive macroalgaalso opens the door to suspicions that environmental issues are being used as propaganda rather than as a solution.
“Without regulation and monitoring, sargassum could become the new gold that few control and many suffer from,” warned the NGO Grupo Jaragua.
The poet and popularizer Ruth Hellerwrote that the Sargasso Sea has always been “a sea within a sea,” mysterious and autonomous. The metaphor appears in her book A Sea Within a Sea: Secrets of the Sargasso (2000). Beyond poetry, by 2025 the Caribbean has become a “sea within the global sea,” where the debate rages on about whether “brown gold” will drive bioindustries, and who will dominate the value chain, or whether it will remain, at best, mere pestilent waste.
Diplomatic and pragmatic tensions
One of the disputes occurred when Mexico and the Dominican Republic created a bilateral working group to manage the arrival of the more than 40,000 tons of seaweed expected on their shores in 2025. Tensions arose over who would bear the costs of treating the seaweed, especially for toxins, heavy metals, and logistics, and over who would reap the benefits of a potential commercial value chain.
Sargassum seaweed represents one of the major challenges facing tourism today. (Solangel Valdez/El Inmobiliario).
In Mexico, hoteliers in Quintana Roo complained that official barriers and support do not cover all the affected kilometers of coastline, as reported by El Economista in 2021, and in the rest of the Caribbean, less touristy beach communities demand that international commitments translate into tangible local action, not just diplomas and roundtables.
In the Dominican Republic, the government has presented strong initiatives (National Cabinet, decrees, regional coalitions), which are complemented by academic initiatives, but there is also a reported gap between diplomatic discourse and practical implementation in smaller beaches or coastal communities that do not belong to tourist destinations.
The international chessboard
In her celebrated novel *Wide Sargasso Sea* (1966), the writer Jean Rhys transformed it into a metaphor for stifled identities and colonial tensions that arose during Christopher Columbus's first voyage, when his sailors were troubled by the sheer amount of vegetation surrounding their ships. Five centuries later, that same sea has multiplied and now crashes down on the Caribbean beaches in massive quantities, tracing an map of power in the region.
At COP28 in Dubai in 2023, the European Union presented the initiative "Turning Sargassum into an Economic Opportunity" within its Global Gateway for Latin America and the Caribbean. France and territories such as Guadeloupe and Martinique, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic assumed leadership roles there.
The European Union allocates part of its climate cooperation to this issue and the IDB includes it in its portfolio, financing projects for more than US$2 million, although the gap between commitments and local implementation persists.
Sargassum has taken a step up: it has gone from being a tourist nuisance to a global where funds, resolutions and technologies are decided that could soon be exported to Africa or the Pacific.
Will the Caribbean's brown gold be the spark of a fair bioindustry, or a diplomatic mirage that hides more costs than benefits?
Last June, during the Third UN Ocean Conference (UNOC3) in Nice, the Dominican Republic led an initiative on the crisis, convening partners such as Mexico, France, Costa Rica, the Association of Caribbean States (ACS), the OECS, and others, to present a resolution on common sargassum flows, monitoring, financing, and governance.
These agreements have not yet translated into a clear pace of implementation or sufficient funding, according to statements by Alicia Bárcena of Mexico, who acknowledged that “we don’t have time for incremental measures.” The pressure to expect urgent action translates into tension between the scientific/environmental urgency and the actual capacity for implementation.
The value chain as a horizon
The Dominican Republic is poised to lead the fight against sargassum. (Solangel Valdez/El Inmobiliario).
As 2025 approaches, efforts to coordinate the entire supply chain are underway: satellite monitoring (INTEC project), offshore collection, pretreatment, industrial processing, and export markets. Most importantly, for the first time, there is talk of commitments regarding volume and timelines, not just pilot projects.
With adequate investment, the Dominican Republic, thanks to its infrastructure, university capacity, and tourism sector, can lead the regional platform, but if it falls behind, Mexico or the islands of the Lesser Caribbean will assume that role.
Sargassum is no longer just a smelly tide that spoils Instagram photos and makes life difficult for fishermen and hotel owners. It is a geopolitical, economic, and environmental challengethat, like sugar in the recent past or tourism in the present, could shape the history of the Caribbean in the 21st century.
The dilemma is whether the region will manage to transform it into a fair and sustainable , or whether it will become trapped between promises and escalating cleanup costs. On the horizon, unseen by Lucía, a sea within a sea is taking shape, as Ruth Heller wrote: an autonomous universe of mysteries and possibilities.
The Caribbean must decide whether sargassum will be trash or the future.
References
European Commission. (2023). Turning Sargassum into an Economic Opportunity. COP28, Dubai.
Reuters. (2025). Mexico, Dominican Republic propose joint efforts to fight sargassum seaweed.
INTEC. (2025). ResAgro-Sargasso Project.
Dominican Today. (2025). Tourism Minister allocates US$1 million for sargassum research.
Inter-American Development Bank. (2024). Projects DR-G0014 and DR-G0015.
Wired. (2025). There Is More Sargassum Than Ever in the Caribbean.
The Guardian. (2025). Seaweed startups in Grenada.
VogueBusiness. (2025). Could this invasive seaweed become the cashmere of the ocean?
