Riviera Maya beaches from the air

Conditions near the cubes were close to perfect this morning. The water is transparent turquoise and the shoreline is clean.

Further south, along Forum, Chac Mool and Delfines, some sargassum has accumulated along the shoreline. The beach remains easily swimmable, and the water beyond the waterline is still clear.

This is consistent with the northern beaches of Cancún generally being cleaner, and with conditions deteriorating as the coast turns south and faces the open sea directly.

Playa 72 was overwhelmed. Cleaning crews were at work during the flight, and the footage gives a fair sense of why the task is so demanding: the volume arriving along this stretch is far beyond what can be cleared in a morning, and the effort required is considerable.

The second flight, over Playa 88 and Playa 72, shows the containment barriers intercepting part of the material but by no means all of it, and the water inshore of the line remains brown. That is consistent with our broader assessment of how effective the barriers are: they reduce what arrives, they do not prevent it.

At Punta Esmeralda the water was among the worst we have seen anywhere in the Riviera Maya: a dark, coffee-like brown rather than any shade of blue, despite noticeably less sargassum settled on the sand.

That contrast is the reason a beach cannot be judged on its shoreline alone. A stretch can look reasonably clean underfoot while the water in front of it is unswimmable in appearance, and the reverse also occurs. Both readings belong in an assessment, which is why our scores account for the sand and the water together.

This flight is held over the lighthouse at Punta Cancún, the promontory that divides the northern shore of the hotel zone from the eastern one. Playa Caracol lies immediately to one side and Playa Gaviota Azul to the other, which makes the point a useful vantage: the water around it is transparent, turquoise and free of sargassum.

The northern beaches of Cancún sit in the lee of the point and of Isla Mujeres beyond it, and they commonly present better conditions than the exposed eastern shore. This footage is consistent with that pattern.

This first flight runs the shoreline across Playa 88, Playa 72 and Playa Pelícanos, three adjoining beaches, and the variation within that single stretch is considerable. Some sections carry brown, discoloured water close in, while others a short distance away are visibly clearer. This shows the importance of segmenting beaches and of publishing precise data for each rather than one reading for the whole coast.

The more encouraging part of the picture is on land. The beaches are not overwhelmed at the waterline, and there is very little visible deposit on the sand, which means little or no rotting sargassum ashore.

The second flight heads deeper over the ocean. The containment barriers are visible from above, with a sargassum vessel working the line, and further from shore the Caribbean recovers its turquoise colour. It is a useful reminder that the discoloured band can sometimes be a coastal phenomenon rather than a condition of the whole sea.

Seeing the barriers and the vessel in the same frame also gives a sense of scale that no photograph from the sand provides: the length of the line, and how much of it is being worked at any one time.