Meia Praia in Lagos is the latest beach to be invaded by a huge amount of algae, extending across practically the entire sandbank, which is around 5 kilometres long. (video)
As one of the largest beaches in the Algarve, this impressive sight stretches around 5km along the beach, but is most impressive near the pier and the city of Lagos.
This is a phenomenon that has recently been occurring on several Algarve beaches. The beaches of Armação de Pêra, Vau, Três Irmãos and Praia da Rocha were some of the beaches that were recently taken over by these algae, which, according to experts, originate from Asian countries such as Japan and South Korea.
This is a situation that causes inconvenience to bathers, has potential negative effects on fishing and marine fauna and means that local authorities end up spending a lot of money, as the operation of removing so many tons of algae from the sands is neither cheap nor quick.
This was exactly what happened a few weeks ago at Praia da Rocha. Initially, Portimão City Council cleaned a large part of the beach and deposited all the seaweed found near the pier, forming a real mountain, which took several days to be finally removed.
Since this is a phenomenon that results from special conditions caused by the tides, another possibility is to simply hope that, sooner or later, the sea will eventually carry the algae back.
But until that happens, what we see is a very unattractive postcard of the Algarve beaches.
Source and video by https://www.algarvemarafado.com/
