Protecting Posidonia meadows to keep our marine environment healthy and full of life
The Mediterranean Sea is one of the most polluted and overexploited seas on the planet, despite being home to one of the so-called lungs of the Earth, Posidonia oceanica, an endemic aquatic plant present in the waters of Ibiza and Formentera that is key to our marine ecosystem.
Posidonia is not only a highly effective carbon sink capable of absorbing 15 times more CO2 from the atmosphere than the Amazon rainforest, but it is also home to an enormous range of organisms. The meadows also purify the waters around us, giving them their characteristic turquoise colour, generate huge amounts of oxygen, capture plastic materials dumped into the sea and return them to dry land, and prevent erosion along the coastline by keeping the sand in place.
In Ibiza and Formentera we are fortunate to have extensive Posidonia meadows that are as many as 80,000 to 100,000 years old. These have been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. However, the uncontrolled anchoring of boats, pollution and coastal urbanisation have destroyed thousands of square metres of Posidonia, a loss that has serious repercussions for our ecosystem.
For this reason, in addition to compiling information on the state of the sea, IbizaPreservation has also launched a responsible boating course aimed at skippers and the nautical sector in general, in order to raise awareness among sailors about their responsibility every time they go out to sea. This is a course project developed by the association One Planet One Life ,which will be delivered to nautical companies and individuals with the support of the Spanish Ministry for Ecological Transition.
© Manu San Félix
© Manu San Félix
In addition, we are also financing a study evaluating the state of Ibiza’s Posidonia meadows by the environmental group Gen-Gob. We have also lent our support to experts in the marine environment such as Manu San Félix, to whom we gave a grant to map the Posidonia meadows around Formentera, as well as supporting his Vellmarí Association’s Formentera Dive Camp, a children’s education programme, and the development of the Posidonia MAPS application. This can be downloaded free of charge on iOS and Android.
IbizaPreservation is a signatory of the Act4Posidonia commitment promoted by POSBEMED 2, a project funded by the Interreg MED programme. The charter asks stakeholders to make specific and concrete commitments for promoting more natural beaches that respect the functioning of coastal ecosystems and more specifically calls for the preservation of Posidonia banquettes. These are accumulations of dead leaves deposited by the sea along sea shores, which support biodiversity and play a major role in limiting beach erosion.
IbizaPreservation is a signatory of the Act4Posidonia commitment led by the POSBEMED 2 project, funded by the Interreg Mediterranean programme, which promotes the governance and management of Posidonia beach-dune systems across the Mediterranean. The charter demands concrete commitments that respect the functioning of coastal ecosystems and more specifically calls for the protection and preservation of banquettes, accumulations of dead Posidonia leaves which play a major role in limiting beach erosion.
