Mar Menor becomes 'Dead Sea'
Prosecution service opens investigation into mass mortality disaster
The prosecution service has opened an investigation into the mass fish mortality disaster in the Mar Menor this week
MORE than three tonnes of dead fish and crustaceans have been removed from the shores of the Mar Menor at Villananitos and La Mota beaches in San Pedro del Pinatar since Saturday.
Ecologists, volunteers and environmental officers tried to save those which had been able to survive by putting them into buckets of water and taking them to ‘safer’ areas of the lagoon.
The beaches were identified as a health hazard and closed for the cleaning works.
The incident is the worst environmental disaster the Mar Menor has faced so far, according to Greenpeace and ecologist association ANSE.
The prosecution service has launched an investigation into the causes of the catastrophe.
A spokesman said they will probe ‘until the very end’ to find out what has happened and who or what is responsible.
According to ANSE and WWF the extermination event has been caused by an acute shortage of oxygen in the water.
However, the results of the tests carried out in the area are expected to officially establish the reasons for the deaths.
The regional government initially blamed fishing nets for the disaster but later stated that the September floods had washed more than 60 cubic hectometres of water full of organic matter and nutrients into the Mar Menor.
According to the regional authorities, two layers of water with different density and salinity were created.
As a result plant life on the sea bottom grew very quickly, covering the seafloor with organic matter which consumed all oxygen in the lower layer.
Both layers then ‘mixed’ due to the wind and the oxygen shortfall killed the fish.
However, the regional government’s argument has not convinced residents, fishermen, environmental associations or forestry guards.
ANSE, WWF and Greenpeace stressed that the flood was the last straw for a lagoon which has been in decline for many years.
ANSE president Pedro García stressed that the Mar Menor has been undergoing eutrophication process – when a body of water becomes overly enriched with minerals and nutrients which induce excessive growth of algae and oxygen depletion – since 2016 and nothing has been done to stop it.
The environmentalists blame intensive farming practices and the run-off of chemicals from the fields into the Mar Menor; overbuilding close to the shore; illegal wells in the area; the construction of pleasure ports; and the lack of a protection network of plants and green filters around the Mar Menor.
They have urged the regional and national authorities to take effective measures after 30 years of looking the other way.
San Pedro del Pinatar fishermen’s guild said that they were ‘sceptical’ about the regional government’s reasoning.
They noted this was a ‘fatal accident waiting to happen’.
They will not work at the moment as their clients have warned that their fish will not be bought.
A spokesman said 150 families depend on the Mar Menor and stressed that they have no alternative source of income.
The fishermen will participate in all three demonstrations scheduled in Murcia, Santiago de la Ribera and Cartagena on October 17, 24 and 30 respectively.
Acting minister for ecological transition Teresa Ribera visited the area on Wednesday and met regional politicians, fishermen and the environmental associations ANSE and WWF.
According to Sra Rivera the mass mortality event proves the existing economic model is unsustainable.
She said the advice of scientists has to be followed and major changes are needed to the way the land and water are used, in a clear reference to the intensive farming practices and the blanket building policies.
She vowed that she would work side by side with the regional government, but she warned that ‘there is no magic solution’.
Sra Ribera stressed that priorities have to change and the rush for profit has to be replaced by sustainability and long-term planning.
“This is an environmental emergency,” she noted.
Surprisingly, the Mar Menor does not have any single specific law to protect it.
In 1987 the Socialist party (PSOE) passed a pioneering protection law which banned all spillages and limited building and intensive farming.
However, the law was replaced by the Partido Popular (PP) in 2001 with the regional land law.
Another two protection plans have been in the pipeline for many years and have never seen the light of day.
An ANSE spokeswoman told Costa Blanca News this week that they had been summoned to an urgent meeting ‘because they now want to have it passed in two months’.
The regional government cancelled their own the project for a network of green filters at the mouth of the main watercourses which feed into the Mare Menor.
They had also refused to include the network in the national scheme for zero spillages.