If you live on an island, or near a beach, you've probably gone blind to the sight and nose-blind to the scent of sargassum. It seems to be ever present, even though it travels in seasons. But it has a massive effect on tourism destinations since tourists aren't too keen on spending thousands of dollars just to have to soak in the sight and smell of rotting seaweed.
But Blackbird Resort is ahead of the game - for the past three years, they've been using a special beach raker which has kept them booked and busy. And today, they flew our news team out to the Caye to get a real time look at how it works. Courtney Menzies has this story.
Blackbird Resort sits on the Turneffe atoll, and like any other seafront location, it has to deal with smelly sargassum stinking up its shores.
But the resort's owner, Garen Simonyan, has found a solution to his sargassum situation - a beach rake. But not just any ordinary beach rake. Simonyan, who also owns Beach Tech Belize, swears by the HBarber Surf Rake to eliminate sargassum quickly and without breaking the bank.
Garen Simonyan, Owner, Beach Tech Belize
"The difference we've seen is we're completely full, and we're booked all the way through to the end of the season. That has everything to do with the conditions of the resort along with the type of resort and what we do here. But the days of telling tourists that come in, I'm sorry, this is Mother Nature, there's nothing we can do about it, I think have passed. I think COVID also made a push where the expectations are different, people are coming to the Caribbean more because it's closer once the pandemic finished up, but our tourists are expecting resort owners to actually take care of the beaches, they don't care anymore that there's sargassum just sitting there rotting and that the smell is just making them nauseous. They are requiring it to be clean, so I started looking for a solution and we ended up with the HBarber Surf Rake."
And to prove it, Simonyan invited our camera as well as various municipalities and hotels who are also battling with sargassum to see how the Surf Rake cleans all of the seaweed without disrupting too much of the sand.
Garen Simonyan, Owner, Beach Tech Belize
"So today was a demo for the HD600 which is their flagship sargassum equipment. We brought in San Pedro, Hopkins, Placencia, Caye Caulker, as well as some of the bigger hoteliers today so that we could actually demonstrate, so that they could see a live experience. This equipment has been running on the beach for three years, eight hours a day, everyday. What we did not do is we didn't paint it and make it look shiny and new, this is real world, I want them to actually see what exactly a piece of equipment would look like if it's running on their beaches for three years straight."
And the Hbarber Surf Rake isn't just used at Blackbird Resort - it's responsible for cleaning sargassum and garbage off beaches in almost 100 countries around the world. According to the company's director of sales and marketing, what sets the Surf Rake apart is its ability to work well in dry and wet sand conditions.
Christopher Kelly, Director, Sales & Marketing, HBarber & Sons
"There's basically two ways to clean the beach, you can rake the debris up or you can try to sift the sand wand with sifting, I'm basically talking, you have to pick up the entire beach and try to process it back through the working mechanism of the machine. With our unit, the idea is to lift the debris, not the sand. The whole idea with collecting sargassum is not just to get the sargassum collected of course, but to make sure that we're leaving the sand on the beach. When you're trying to sift sand, it's difficult and it's slower, that's a difficult process but it's very difficult to sift wet sand, that's why the Surf Rake is by far the dominant machine on the globe if you have an issue of cleaning wet sand."
And the hot dip galvanizing process that HBarber utilizes ensures that the machine lasts for decades even while spending days in salt water.
And it's these features that have both the mayor of San Pedro Town and the chairman of Placencia Village considering getting the Surf Rake for their own municipalities, especially after the massive mounds of sargassum that have washed up on their beaches.
Gualberto "Wally" Nunez, Mayor of San Pedro Town
"One of the main issues is getting the people to work it. You need a lot of man power to be able to clean the beaches on a daily basis and it's not only the manpower but it's the resources because it takes a lot. A lot of resort have also been complaining because not only their guests are leaving or changing their bookings, but we also have issues for them that they have to be paying all these extra staff."
"Which it usually amounts to over $10,000 a month, that is putting quite a dent on the tourism industry."
"I think the beach rake would help tremendously because we have seen here today how fast it picks it up with a lot less, well it's only one person operating it and I believe that would help us a lot."
"There is a resort who has just purchased one just like this one here that is the same brand and the same type of tractor. [00:02:11.16] and we will be partnering with them to be able to try it out on the beaches for the Town Council to see if it will benefit the town. The way how we are seeing it working here is that it does work pretty well on small and tight spaces like how we can see here between the dock and this other area, so I believe it will definitely work in San Pedro."
Warren Garbutt, Chairman, Placencia Village Council
"It's very costly and if you know anything about village councils, our revenue stream is very minimal, it costs us quite a bit, we do get some assistance from the Belize Tourism Board, but it's not nearly enough, we use some of the resources that we have financially to employ human labor to just get it out of the water, onto the beach, where our beach rake can pass and pick it up, but it's extremely labor intensive and costly to get that out and we do it because it's so important as I said to the tourism industry."
"It's a common question, you visit social media sites, you do see people asking before they come, is there any sargassum on the beach? So it's a popular question and definitely a concern of people who visit."
"I'm impressed with the beach rake. We do have a beach rake in Placencia, the rake we have there, it's a different design, one of the huge challenges that we have with it is that it picks up a lot of sand. Replenishment of sand is very important and we don't want to remove too much sand off the beach, I'm very impressed with the pick up from this machine, it's definitely something that would work very well in Placencia. Another thing I like about it is that it maneuvers very easily the beaches, as we know, in Placencia we're fortunate that we don't have many docks or obstructions on our beach, however, lots of property are very close to the beach, trees, so you need to maneuver around those and this machine can definitely do that quiet easily."
And maybe the Surf Rake can be part of Belize's solution to freeing the beaches of the dreaded sargassum that washes in every year - though, the problem of what to do with it after that still remains.
Naia Resort in Placencia and Las Terrazas in San Pedro also utilize the Surf Rake.
