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Monday, August 16 dawned around the Mar Menor with the sad sight of hundreds of fish and molluscs lying dead on the shores of the beaches of Islas Menores, Los Nietos and Los Urrutias, with other specimens washing up on Mar de Cristal and Cala del Pino, in the municipality of Cartagena, as early as Sunday evening.

 

The corpses of hundreds of small fish and different marine species such as hermit crabs and shellfish lying dead along the shores of Mar Menor beaches have raised more alarm bells for residents and caused a wave of both resident anger and political argument as the demand for measures to prevent the deterioration of the lagoon becomes all the more urgent.

 

On Monday morning, representatives from the Ministry of the Environment assured that water samples from the beaches in question had been analysed and that an episode of anoxia – a lack of oxygen supply – had been ruled out. The Ministry instead pointed to the extremely high temperatures over the past few days as the cause for the death of the smaller species. 

 

Javier Gilabert, professor of Chemical Engineering at the UPCT, and member of the Scientific Committee for the Mar Menor says that the rise in temperauture of the water over the last few days due to the record temperatures of the last weekend have caused a rise in the water temperature, which reduces the oxygen level of the water.

The water temperature has increased in just a few days from 28 to 30 degrees and "oxygen depends on the temperature. The more degrees there are, the less oxygen the water has," adds Gilabert, who acknowledges that an episode of ' brown soup '(not green such as the one in the summer of 2016) is taking place, and this is due to a "high concentration of chlorophyll, which is common at this time of the year".
 

Despite reassurances, environmental groups fear that the devastation following a gota fría in September and October 2019 is about to repeat itself. After this violent storm, thousands of fish washed up dead in Islas Menores and Lo Pagan, and the cause was determined to be a lack of oxygen in the water due to the volume of fresh water washing into the lagoon creating a "blanket effect" as it slid in over the top of the saline water of the lagoon, the lack of oxygen in the saline layer literally suffocating the fish.

 

 

SOS Mar Menor are adamant that the current situation has worrying echoes of how the major episode of anoxia occurred in 2019 when dead fish washed up on the same beaches, and they warned that a similar episode is likely to occur in the coming days in Los Alcázares. According to the group, fishermen have claimed that there are almost no fish in the centre of the Mar Menor, that their nets are coming up black and the fish they do manage to catch are dying quickly.

 

The devastating loss of marine life comes after a weekend of protests in the Mar Menor, with local groups collecting signatures for a petition to establish the area as an independent legal entity in order to protect Europe’s largest saltwater lagoon. On Friday, thousands of people took to twenty beaches throughout the Mar Menor and some 10,000 signatures were gathered. Again on Sunday, fifty boats carrying black flags with the symbolic seahorse, which represents the fight in defence of the Mar Menor, set sail from the Tomás Maestre marina in an effort to encourage people to sign the petition.

 

500,000 names are needed by the end of October to bring the matter formally to Congress, and around 250,000 have so far been obtained.

 

Although the regional government was quick to send representatives to collect water samples and remove the offending corpses, all of the regional opposition parties have joined together to condemn the situation and blame the regional government for the current problems assailing the lagoon.

The PSOE, Podemos, Cs and Voxall joined together en-bloc to blame the “inaction” of the PP regional government and expressed their dissatisfaction with the management of the Minister of the Environment, Antonio Luengo, while demanding that regional President Miras sack those concerned.

Meanwhile, the PP has defended itself by adopting its normal response of attacking the central government and accusing it of inaction: "The Government of Spain has abandoned the Mar Menor, since it has 80% of the powers and has done nothing for its recovery ", they said in a statement.

Residents meanwhile, could do little more than once again express their sadness and dissatisfaction with the situation via social media and gathered in the plaza of El Espejo in Los Alcázares to protest, confirming their intention to protest once again on Saturday when the Vuelta a España cycle race passes through the region.
 

The situation in the Mar Menor is very complicated. CLICK HERE to find out more.

 

Images:

1: Pacto por el Mar Menor; photographer Adrian Aguilar

2 and 3:Salvemos el Mar Menor