Murcia Dead fish in the Mar Menor lagoon: they denounce that it is again "on the edge" of the "green soup"
Pollution The Mar Menor, a 'chronic patient'
The naturalists and ecologists of Murcia had been announcing it since June. Far from recovery, the Mar Menor gave symptoms of agony. Added to the tons of rotten algae collected throughout the year were crabs, shrimp, and belly-up fish. Last Monday the shores of the beaches of Cala del Pino, Islas Menores, Lengua de Vaca (Los Nietos) and Marchamalo, in the municipality of Cartagena, were covered with them. It is the second death of Mar Menor, three consecutive days of death. An "ecocide", as different associations denounce.
The Office of the Public Prosecutor has opened an investigation and has requested a series of reports in addition to those of the Community's environmental crimes brigade
. "The Seprona of the Civil Guard of the Region of Murcia is carrying out a series of inspections on different beaches of Mar Menor, taking samples
sent for analysis. There is an ongoing investigation that cannot yet give any results," he comments to this means the Seprona de Murcia.
The extent and amount of dead fauna collected from the beaches is still unknown.
"On Tuesday about 250 kilos were counted. Today [Wednesday] some others have been collected at various points, but it has not yet been quantified," a representative of the Ministry of Agriculture, Water, Livestock, Fisheries and Environment of the Government of the Murcia Region.
The experts divided
Hours after the death of the fish was evidenced, a member of the Scientific Committee of the Murcia region ruled out anoxia due to the scarcity of affected species and blamed what happened to the heat wave.
However,
the opinion of this regional committee does not coincide with that of the independent scientific community.
"The first thing we have to see is whether this atmospheric heat wave corresponds to a marine heat wave," Juan Manuel Ruiz, a researcher at the Spanish Institute of Oceanography (IEO-CSIC) told this newspaper. This is measured with submersible sensors that record the temperature of the sea in deeper layers, values that are different from those that can occur on the surface. "We will have to analyze the data and see if there has been a thermal anomaly that could explain the mortality of the fish," he explains.
According to the IEO, which analyzes the causes of the new episode of massive mortality of the fauna of the Mar Menor, the affected animals belong to a great variety of species on the seabed or close to it, fingerlings, fish and small crustaceans, "with lower escape capacity and, therefore, more vulnerable to stress factors such as temperature, anoxia or the toxicity of some type of pollutant ", they state in a statement.
Despite the high temperatures recorded in the last week, the experts at this center do not
point to this cause as the sole reason for what happened.
They emphasize that
The Mar Menor is in a process of eutrophication (excess nutrients due to pollution that triggers the growth of organisms that consume oxygen) in which anoxia phenomena have already occurred, such as the one that occurred in 2016 and 2019. The latter caused the death of 85% of the fauna of the salty lagoon, an ecological disaster from which it has not yet recovered. Global increases in temperatures or severe adverse weather events make it difficult for healthy ecosystems. Species such as those of Mar Menor are adapted to them, but they can be deadly when the environment is highly degraded, as their ability to resist alterations is less.
The Southeast Meteorology Association has already expressed itself about the high temperatures and emphasizes that
it is not possible to speak of a marine heat wave,
since it ensures that the data recorded in Mar Menor and the trajectory of this summer is typical of other years.
The 'autopsy' is underway
The IEO does not rule out any hypotheses while it proceeds to the sampling and analysis of the results.
At the end of August or beginning of September they are expected to publish a report, so we will have to wait, again, for this autopsy of the Murcian lagoon.
"Any diagnosis of the Mar Menor and of the causes that have triggered this new event must be carried out from the scientific rigor",
is indicated from IEO.
"It must be made clear that the factors do not act alone and that the main factor that can trigger mortality such as the one we have seen comes from a fundamental problem that is eutrophication, promoted by the massive influx of nutrients into the Mar Menor and that is the origin of what we are seeing. To trivialize what happened to a heat stroke is to decontextualize and simplify the problem, "concludes Ruiz.
The Government of the Region of Murcia does not consider itself responsible
and anticipates that it will denounce the Minister for the Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge (Miteco) Teresa Ribera, for allowing the entry of nutrients and fresh water to the Mar Menor. "The Community denounces the Ministry for its inaction in matters that are within its competence and that could have contributed to the deterioration. Two examples are the removal of sludge from the areas where there is and, mainly, the non-execution of the Zero Waste Project. which causes 30,000 liters of fresh water and about 5,700 kilos of nutrients to enter each day through ravines (especially Albujón), compromising the level of oxygen and salinity and thereby putting the ecosystem at risk ", says the Ministry.
In this way, while the game of competencies makes it difficult to understand responsibilities, the emissions of pollutants that reach Mar Menor continue to originate throughout the region and the environmental problem is not addressed, so the fish continue to appear dead.
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