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Date Published: 19/08/2021

ARCHIVED - Protests in the Mar Menor as dead fish appear for fourth consecutive day

ARCHIVED ARTICLE

A mermaid was among the protestors at Playa Los Alemanes on Thursday

<span style='color:#780948'>ARCHIVED</span> - Protests in the Mar Menor as dead fish appear for fourth consecutive day

Protestors returned to the shores of the Mar Menor on Thursday morning, this time to the beach of Los Alemanes in La Manga in support of the initiative spearheaded by the Popular Legislation Initiative (ILP) to secure independent legal status for the Mar Menor. Supporters hope that this will create a legal body which can manage the complex issues surrounding the lagoon, simplistically without the intervention of so many opposing political views and bodies.

Among the demonstrators was Cartagena actress Natividad Guerrero, who, dressed as a mermaid, thrashed along the muddy shore and emulated dying, along with the corpses of dozens of fish which have continued to wash up along the beaches.

Protestors today carried the now familiar black flags and banners, signifying the poor condition of the lagoon. The groups hope to obtain the 500,000 signatures required by the end of October to present their request for legal independence to the Congress of Deputies.

No estamos cerca,pero el ecocidio de esta semana nos da más fuerza aún. #HazteFedatario por tu #MarMenor https://t.co/eCULQu774K pic.twitter.com/VOkLUHvoO3
— M. Dolores Martínez (@kikamusicsecund) August 19, 2021

Video: ILP Mar Menor

The latest protests have been sparked by countless small fish and crustaceans washing up on the Mar Menor shores all week, something which local environmental groups fear indicates a repeat of the anoxia which occurred in 2019. At the beginning of the week the regional government insisted that water samples taken from the lagoon showed that the fish had not died from anoxia – a lack of oxygen in the water – but rather because of the high temperatures experienced in the region in the last few days.

However, Ángel Pérez Ruzafa, professor of Ecology at the University of Murcia (UMU) and spokesman for the Mar Menor scientific control team, insisted that the data collected so far points to a case of hypoxia, where oxygen levels fall slightly but are not completely depleted.

<span style='color:#780948'>ARCHIVED</span> - Protests in the Mar Menor as dead fish appear for fourth consecutive day

Today the president of the Murcian regional government visited the lagoon, the Director General of the Mar Menor, Miriam Pérez, calling for the national government to implement measures to oxygenate the water and pointing out that in 2019 plans had been put forward for a pilot project to oxygenate the water from a point off the San Pedro del Pinatar coastline, where excess algal growth was forming, but it had been impractical to proceed with the trial. She blamed the national government for responding to the suggestion with "so many obstacles and the request for so many reports that it was unfeasible to carry it out."

The regional government is now accepting that the tests carried out by the Polytechnic University of Cartagena (UPCT) and the Ministry of Water, Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and the Environment have detected certain areas with little oxygen (anoxia) and that the possibility exists that a major incidence of anoxia could occur.

Peréz said that faced with this situation, "we ask the Secretary of State for the Environment and, ultimately, the Government of Spain, to tell us what can be tested or what can be done if a new episode of anoxia occurs, so that we do not find ourselves again before a refusal to projects proposed by the Autonomous Community that can help minimize damage to the ecosystem ".

And so continues the blame game which is so frustrating campaigners and residents, with the endless attempts of the regional government to blame the national government, while the national government continues to insist that the regional government has competence for the lagoon and is responsible for preventing the problems which have caused the deterioration, mainly the continuous run-off of agricultural chemicals into the lagoon via the natural ramblas which disgorge into the lagoon.

At present it is calculated that the amount of water making its way into the Mar Menor via the Rambla del Albujón is 176.81 litres per second, and with each litre containing an average of 119 milligrams of nutrients this equates to an astonishing 2,892 kilos of nitrates every day.

Lower rates of runoff are reported at the Rambla de Miranda and the Rambla las Matildes as well as in El Carmolí, but they also contribute to the problem.

Sr Ruzafa today criticised the government’s suggestion of manually deoxygenating the water of the Mar Menor, claiming that this is only a short-term solution that could actually cause more damage. Instead, he argued that the only permanent solution is to manage the agricultural off-flow and reinforce the aquifer so that it can cope with the levels of water.

His opinion is backed-up by opposition political parties and ecologists, who have issued multiple condemnations of the situation and criticised the continuous water run-off into the lagoon. ANSE and the WWF lamented that the "regional government is renouncing its responsibility for the grave problems facing the Mar Menor and is instead launching denunciations against the national government, instead of looking for avenues of collaboration and co-ordination to obtain aid from the state and European Union to resolve an environmental problem derived from the non-application of regional environmental controls for decades."

🔴Hoy continúan muriendo peces y crustáceos en el #MarMenor en diferentes puntos🔴 Según pudimos comprobar con @asociacionanse
En este video aparecen nuevas imágenes de hoy en la Cala del Pino (La Manga)
+ info https://t.co/ZH8IOcpbI9 pic.twitter.com/3TT2P659l4
— WWF España 🐼 (@WWFespana) August 18, 2021