GULF SHORES, Ala. — An unprecedented amount of seaweed has the city of Gulf Shores taking an unprecedented step to get the beaches clear for visitors.

On Monday the City Council approved $11,000 to fund an effort with private contractors and city workers to get the sands cleared as quickly as this weekend. City workers will first sift the seaweed for trash and pile it up and a contractor will come in with a trackhoe and bury it in the sand in areas south of the mean high tide line.

There was a second option presented that would have cost $7,000, but used exclusively city workers for the task.

“There’s two options in here and one is if we hire a contractor to assist and the city to help and the cost would be $11,000 and it would take five to seven days,” Mayor Robert Craft said. “The other option would be for the city only to do it using only our people and personnel and it would cost $7,000 and would take eight to nine days. But we would probably be having to defer some of the existing activities of the city staff.”

Councilman Steve Jones made a motion to accept the first bid and the council voted unanimously for approval.

“We feel this is an extraordinary event so we would propose and suggest option one,” City Administrator Steve Griffin said. “That way we can keep the city crews doing their thing.”

Public Works Director Mark Acreman said the city was trying to get it done as quickly as possible to show visitors Gulf Shores was serious about having clean beaches and to make the experience more pleasant for arriving visitors.

“The quicker we can get it off the beach, the better it’s going to be,” Councilman Phillip Harris said. “Every day it sits out there it’s detrimental to our visitors.”

Gulf State Park is working on cleaning its beaches and Orange Beach has already completed gathering and burying seaweed on its beaches.

“The preferred recommendation from Fish and Wildlife and the way we address it is we bundle it into piles and bury it below the mean high tide line straight down,” Acreman said. “That’s how we’ve addressed it on our public beaches to date and in the past on our public beaches.”

State Park Naturalist Kelly Reetz said the seaweed under the sand is a positive for the environment.

“It decomposes in the sand and helps to provide nutrients to beach plants,” she said. “It’s best left on the beach. It will collect sand, and the sand will cover it and it provides nutrients for the invertebrates and to the plants.”

Hauling the weeds off, Coastal Resources Director Phillip West of Orange Beach said, would have been too time consuming.

“Hauling it off is probably preferably, but the trip times, we’d be out there for two more weeks if we had to haul it off the beach,” West said. “We rowed it, collected it, made several piles along the beach and followed along with a backhoe and buried it.”

Councilman Joe Garris asked if the Share the Beach turtle volunteer group was notified of the work on the beach.

“We do that daily with the turtle watch group,” Acreman said. “Having this material off the beach also helps them to more easily identify turtle crawls as well. This does pose, at this level, a problem for the turtles. It could be beneficial for them, too.”

Griffin said the money for the cleaning will come out of leftover beach restoration funds.