Paul Sanchez-Navarro is the Director of the Akumal Ecological Center.
Paul, what can you tell me about this area?
Well, before anything, welcome to Akumal Shawna.
Thank you.
Thanks for coming and what we are going to talk about today, is what makes this place.
Well you mentioned how unique it is.
Well, it is a combination of things.
And the water kind of brings it all together.
But before we start looking at the ocean, the mangroves, the beaches, and everything else.
I wanted to show you this rock here.
That looks at how the peninsula was over a million years ago.
You can take a look at what we are.
The whole Yucatán Peninsula was below the ocean.
It was the ocean floor.
And if you see in the rock here,
you can see pieces of coral,
you have some shells.
And all this is compacted into what we now have is limestone.
And this limestone is used as the building material in the whole region.
That rock has been fractured in different places.
And the reason why I explain this too,
is because those fractures are what makes this place so unique.
We do not have any above ground rivers in this peninsula.
All the water filters straight through all the cracks
and goes into what we call the underground rivers and caves.
And then it empties out into the Caribbean.
This is a map of Akumal.
And, and I would love to learn more about the water and the region.
Okay.
Well, yeah, this is an excellent tool to look at where we are
and how this all comes together.
What we have been talking about.
But, if you see here in the photo, this is Akumal Bay.
And these are the hotel developments along the coast.
And actually, Akumal is the first tourist destination on the coast, before Cancun.
Really?!
It is the oldest place.
And in this photo, you can see the immense jungle we have behind us.
And the federal highway
and then the beach areas, where most of the development is.
Because you know we all come here to see the beach.
When it is raining,
all the Yucatán Peninsula,
water seeps into the ground.
And flows generally towards the coast.
And it all does not come out on the coast.
It comes out.
You notice that you do not see any rivers here.
It is all flowing underneath the ground.
It comes along here.
You can kind of see the open cenote areas, mangroves.
So this is a cenote here?
And then it comes out into Yal-Ku Lagoon.
Where you will be going later.
We will be looking at the mangrove there a bit later.
And you call this what you call a light spring shower?
Yeah, this a spring shower, yes.
And you can see the water here on this.
You do have the surface flows.
Yes.
And if we were in the jungle.
You wouldn't.
It would be disappearing down into the ground.
Cause you would be able to see it actually in the cracks.
And there are some places that are amazing
because we do not have waterfalls here on the coast.
Right.
But there are places that you have a cenote, and then it has collapsed.
So basically the cenote is where the surface has collapsed into where there was a cave.
And so when we get so much rain,
the big summer rains,
that the surface waters then start running down into the cenote.
It is an amazing sight to see.
While the rain is really good for the system, we can not wait for it to let up.
Because when it does, Paul is going to take us to an adventure in the mangroves.
I am very excited!
Thank you for your time today and I can not wait until the sun shines so we can get going.
I wanted to show you a little bit today Shawna, of what is happening right at the shoreline.
What has happened all along the coast biologically.
We have red mangrove right in front of us.
And the mangroves really hold together the coast line.
Well, in a sense, they create a lot of stability for the shifting coastlines.
Coastlines have always been dynamic
that is one thing that we forget, that coasts always shift, the sands shifts.
The tides, the storms make it all shift.
And what holds it stable is the dune and the mangroves.
So we have to make sure we are not on the dune or in the mangrove.
What we are seeing with the root system
is that they spread it out in order to anchor in down into the sand and rocks.
They do not have just one trunk and the roots grow underneath.
All of this is the root system and they will send shoots out.
And we are at the point in the year that we are actually having some of the seeds growing
and you can see some of it.
Let us see what we can find here.
This is a great example, this is earlier though.
This is from last year, it has to be.
This can not be from this year.
And it has this root!
And it has a root coming out already.
So what happens is, this thing will grow.
This thing will grow to this length
and then it will just drop right off and hit right into the sand.
And that is why it is built like this.
So, they drop straight down and where it lands, then it can start growing.
And since this already has roots, this should probably be ready to have a little bit of.
Yeah, this is the new.
It is a baby.
Leaves are coming out.
So we are actually going to but this back in
because it has already started growing quite a lot.
One of the big questions here is, how to we develop on the coast?
We have seen some massive hotels.
The house here is beautiful.
I am wondering, do you know how it is developed around here?
Well, in this particular area, where smaller houses were put in,
there are not any large hotels.
So really, it is a residential area, but it is very good
because it shows us that if you put a house a little further back,
you don't interfere with what is going on right on the coast.
You can enjoy both things.
You can live on the coast and makes sure that the mangroves are intact.
This is an income for the largest portion of this section of the world.
Everyone depends on the reef system and the mangroves.
It is their livelihood, it is where money comes from.
So from a human standard, we should be watching out for all this
because it helps us live better if we are taking care of the environment as well.
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