Across coastal regions of the Yucatán Peninsula and Central America, the ongoing crisis of massive sargassum blooms is pitting urgent beach cleanup needs against the survival of vulnerable marine ecosystems, with endangered sea turtle nesting sites facing the gravest risk. Environmental activists in Mexico’s Playa del Carmen have sounded the alarm that the unregulated heavy machinery currently used to remove masses of sargassum from shorelines is causing irreversible damage to marine life and accelerating coastal erosion.