Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I consider Sargassum as a non-human reclaimant on the Belizean coastal reserve zone, a weedy actor whose persistent arrival by sea disrupts racialized appropriations of the 66-foot coastal reserve zone, the so-called "Queen's Beach."

Paper long abstract:

The explosive growth of tourism in coastal Belize has led to a new era of dispossession by reclamation, in which coastal property is increasingly held by non-Belizean, often white landowners who often challenge the notion of the shoreline as a public reserve. Efforts to use the colonial common law concept of “Queens Beach” to assert public rights to the coast often face resistance and challenges, or outright hostile disregard by foreign property owners. As a result, the shoreline in crowded tourist zones like San Pedro town has become increasingly privatized, more difficult to access, and noticeably more white.

But an unexpected actor has recently reclaimed this Queens Beach—seaweed. Over the past several years, enormous clusters of Sargassum, a slimy brownish-green genus of seaweed (or macroalgae) has inundated beaches, prompting adjacent property owners to scramble to “clean” or “reclaim” the beach. There is an inescapably racial and colonial dynamic to the reclamation of beaches from the ravages of Sargassum: Primarily non-white (Creole, Mestizo, and Maya) Belizeans remove the brown seaweed so that the white sand beach can be more pleasantly consumed by primarily white non-Belizean tourists and expatriates. Yet these efforts at reclamation often fail, and in this failure, new opportunities for reclaiming the beach as a public, Belizean space have emerged.

In this paper, I consider Sargassum as a non-human reclaimant on the Belizean coastal reserve zone, a weedy actor whose persistent arrival by sea disrupts racialized appropriations of public, protected coastal spaces.