And while fancy AI finish can smooth out many bumpy operations, there's not a thing it can do about Sargassum.
As of late April, massive amounts of sargassum have spread across the entire Caribbean Sea, with substantial, increasing influxes affecting the Yucatan Peninsula and Belize.
It's smothering beaches all across Belize and there's nothing anyone can do to stop it - and little that can be done to clean it.
We reported that places like Caye Caulker had acquired a beach raker which soon stopped functioning. And when we spoke with the BTIA president Efren Perez today he told us that certain equipment will only work on certain landscapes.
Efren Perez, President, BTIA
"Yesterday actually we held a meeting in San Pedro during the sustainable summit with a group of about 15 hoteliers in the northern part of Belize we sat down along with the Belize Tourism Board with them to explain to them some of the challenges we are facing in terms of really the clean up effort. Sargassum is something that is really not only a Belize issue it is really a global issue and as much as there has been work being done through the Belize Tourism Board and also through the effort of hotels who had made significant investments it keeps coming. And so it is very costly but what the Belize Tourism Board is doing is they have invested significantly in terms of purchasing equipments and machinery to be used for the clean up efforts. Now one of the things we have to be very cognizant about is we cannot mass buy machineries at this point because we don't know what will happen work. It is a trial and error the same way as any other country is trying it out we are moving as fats as we can, some of the plays we have had in terms of the buying of certain machinery is the time that it takes for it to be delivered. Other countries like Mexico have purchased ahead of us so we are on a waiting list to be produced and that gives us a really significant challenge. Apart from that if we bring in machineries or any other type of system for us to be able to clean up the beach spaces we also have to consider the types of beaches that we have. Placencia's beaches are different from San Pedro's beach it is different from Caye Caulker's beach so what Amy work in Placencia may not work technically work in San Pedro."
As for the San Pedro sargassum harvesters - those went for maintenance some time ago and have not reappeared, according to those we spoke to on San Pedro.