ISSUE NO. 1644
5 - 11 January 2017
COSTA BLANCA SOUTH
YOUR PAPER, YOUR VOICE, YOUR OPINION
WWW.EUROWEEKLYNEWS.COM
Paradise in peril Mar Menor on the brink of ecological disaster claim experts By Matt Ford “A desert of mud.” That is the description of Mar Menor, Europe’s largest coastal lagoon that was once a haven for wildlife. Now it is almost lifeless. Despite being protected under national and international law local councils have not heeded the environmental regulations and no-one is being held to account. The area has been blighted by rampant pollution and a level of urbanisation it cannot sustain. Juan Manuel Ruiz, lead investigator from the Spanish Institute of Oceanography (IEO), has been studying marine vegetation in the lagoon. Two years ago he and his team managed to produce a map showing areas where the impact of human activity was being resisted by marine life. A year later the waters began to transform and go green. That indicates the elevated presence of algae, miniscule plants that disrupt and destroy the lagoon’s delicate eco-system, potentially killing off rare species such as the long-snouted seahorse.
DISASTER: Mar Menor has been blighted by rampant pollution and unchecked urbanisation. The vegetation that could have reversed this process, thick beds of seagrass, is now dying too. They are being killed off
by pollutants and a lack of sunlight, which is unable to penetrate the souplike water. During dives conducted between September
and October 2016, researchers made new measurements and found
that 85 per cent of the seagrass has been lost in just two years, suggesting that the damage may be irreversible. Ruiz is despondent about the situation describing the decline of the area as a new and unfamiliar situation facing his team saying: “We have no information on what we can do.” He added they would “have to go look outside, to other parts of the world that have gone through similar situations. “In some of these places, the situation has reversed in a few months, but here we have already endured this ecological disaster for a year.”