Earthprints: Cancun

“Tourism is now one of the major drivers of the country’s economic growth," Tourism Minister Enrique de la Madrid Cordero said last month at a travel fair in Cancun.

Mexico will attract 30 million visitors this year, generating more than $17 billion in revenue, the government says. Top resorts include Cancun, the nearby Riviera Maya, and Puerto Vallarta on the Pacific coast.

Following the hotel building boom, Cancun's population expanded too, reaching more than 600,000 by 2010.

As mass tourism has arrived, natural habitats including mangrove swamps have gone. Mexico has already lost 65 percent of its mangroves, according to environmental group Greenpeace, with more disappearing with each passing year.

Fewer mangroves lead both to coastal erosion and greater risk of damage when hurricanes do strike, according to CEMDA, the Mexican Center for Environmental Law.

Beachgoers have had another environmental challenge to contend with recently. Tonnes of brown seaweed have choked beaches in resorts throughout the Caribbean including Cancun this season, prompting local authorities to launch a large-scale clean-up operation. The Sargassum algae releases a pungent smell as it decomposes and even before then contains biting sand fleas.

Theories vary as to the cause of the seaweed in such quantities, from rising sea temperatures to a change in currents. Tourists in Cancun were heard complaining of how the seaweed hampered their access to the sea, and some even talked of cutting short their stay because of it.