TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums St. Maarten - St. Martin Seaweed at OBBR/Mr. Busby's

Anyone know what the seaweed situation is presently?

Not good.
Presently staying at Dawn Beach. We tried DB on 28th and it was bad but we stayed a few hours.
Tried again on the 1st and it was worse so we didn't stay.
They are cleaning the beach in the morning with a huge front end loader and trying but when you come out of the water you are covered.
Feel sorry for Mr Busby's. We had breakfast one day and drinks another but waiter said business was very slow even over the holiday period.

It varies. Had not been bad at all until late today but lots was coming in early tonight.

I am an owner at OBBR and recently received the "2015 year end report". In the report it discusses the issue with the Sargassum seaweed intrusion.

Here is a portion from the letter:

"Pearl Development hired a team of experts to closely study the phenomenon...The proposed solution entails the emplacement of floating containment booms in Oyster Bay approximately 1,000 ft off of the beach. Pearl believes that when coupled with a removal pump, the booms will be effective in alleviating most of the influx and make our beach enjoyable for swimming and lounging....Pearl expects to be able to deploy the booms and removal pump by March 2016".

Glad to see they are taking a proactive actions.... no word on the expected cost or likely increase in maintnance fees to cover the new expense.

Wonder if that accumulation will eventually find its way to another nice beach?

...booms in Oyster Bay... That doesn't seem right. I would think that the booms would be out in the water off Dawn Beach since that is where the problem is.

What do you think the water is called in front of Dawn Beach??? That is Oyster Bay, perhaps you are thinking of Oyster Pond?

Supposedly that is what the removal pumps are for, removing the accumulation.

The seaweed already impacts other beaches on SXM, other Caribbean island and the Mexico coast from Cancun to south of Playa.

There were already some booms there in November, but they were not doing a very good job.... they need to be extened further along the beach. Hope that is what they intend to do.

We were there for two weeks Nov/Dec also. You are right, they didn't seem to be effective, however we were told that they were looking to put them further out, run a longer section and add the pumps. At the time we thought it was "just talk", but looks like they are going forward.

Not sure how well pumps will work, but hopeful that they do. We are back on the island next week so will check out the situation in a couple of weeks.

mdldgl
You are right. The far south end of Dawn Beach is called Oyster Bay.