(5 Aug 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
++PART MUTE++
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Fajardo, Puerto Rico – 4 August 2025
1. Various aerials of sargassum floating in the water and boats docked
++MUTE++
2. Various of boat passing through the sargassum
3. SOUNDBI TE (Spanish) Farel Velázquez Cancel, Assistant Secretary for Conservation and Research, Puerto Rico Department of Natural and Environmental Resources (DRNA):
“The department has mobilized around several points in the eastern area to work with a significant influx of sargassum. At this time, in this case, we haven’t reached the Croabas area (eastern part of the island). The operation we’ll be carrying out here over the next two weeks is collecting sargassum using these two sargassum-type vessels we have behind us.”
4. Machinery for cleaning up the sargassum
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Loíza, Puerto Rico – 4 August 2025
5. Aerial of sargassum in water flooding a boat ++MUTE++
6. Machinery cleaning up the sargassum on the beach
7. Aerials of machinery cleaning up the sargassum on the beach ++MUTE++
8. Various of mechanical shovel loading sargassum onto trucks
STORYLINE:
The Department of Natural and Environmental Resources (DRNA) in Puerto Rico has started to remove the sargassum that’s threatening the country’s eastern coast.
Authorities said that although common in Puerto Rico at this time of year, the large amounts they are seeing this year requires immediate action.
Heavy machinery will be working for weeks to collect the sargassum floating in the water and use conveyors to transport it to shore, where a drying area has been set up.
The brown prickly algae is suffocating shorelines, including Fajardo, located on the eastern coast and a popular tourist destination known for its stunning beaches, marinas, and proximity to bioluminescent bays and nearby islands.
Farel Velázquez Cancel, the Assistant Secretary for Conservation and Research, Puerto Rico Department of Natural and Environmental Resources (DRNA) said that the work to remove the sargassum would concentrate in several points of the eastern coast.
"The operation we’ll be carrying out here over the next two weeks is collecting sargassum using these two sargassum-type vessels we have behind us," he said.
A record amount of sargassum has been observed piling up across the Caribbean and nearby areas since May, according to a new report.
In May this year, the 38 million metric tons of sargassum was the largest amount of algae observed across the Caribbean Sea, the western and eastern Atlantic, and the Gulf of Mexico since scientists began studying the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt in 2011, according to a report published by the University of South Florida’s Optical Oceanography Lab.
AP Video by Alejandro Grandillo
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