On the shores of the Mediterranean, “only three countries, France, Spain and Croatia, have laws against mooring” boats on Posidonia seagrass, while moorings can tear up entire sections of these “blue forests,” says Catherine Biant, chief of marine spatial planning at the fund. World Nature in its French branch.
The Posidonia plant, which is more effective in combating climate change than the trees of the Amazon, is a gem that should be protected, as warned a global network of environmental advocates in Corsica, whose waters are home to two-thirds of the plant’s population that lives underwater.
On the shores of the Mediterranean, “only three countries, France, Spain and Croatia, have laws against mooring” boats on Posidonia seagrass, while moorings can tear up entire sections of these “blue forests,” says Catherine Biant, chief of marine spatial planning at the fund. World Nature in its French branch.
These seagrass beds are habitats for fish and centers of protection from erosion, but they are also a sink for carbon, the greenhouse gas that is one of the main causes of global warming. It covers “between 2 and 2.3 million hectares in the Mediterranean”, and “should be completely protected” after “between 10 and 30% of Posidonia disappeared from the region a century ago”.
Member of the European Parliament, François Alfonsi, who is in charge of a recent meeting with the authorities of the island of Corsica that included a number of actors in the “Mediterranean Posidonia Network” in Ajaccio, told AFP, “Poseidonia exists only in the Mediterranean, and today it is the most effective way to capture the second carbon dioxide in the world.
“The amount of carbon dioxide captured by a hectare of Poseidonia is four times more than what is captured by a hectare of the Amazon forest, and 15% of carbon dioxide emissions in Corsica are captured by the seaweed surrounding the island,” he added, according to this local official.
The “Mediterranean Posidonia Network” was established in Athens in 2019, at the initiative of France and Spain, following a European symposium on the impact of ship anchors, and includes about sixty members, including the European Union, 12 of 21 countries around the Mediterranean and major international organizations for environmental protection.
The network, whose activities are coordinated by the French Office for Biological Diversity, has the specific goal of “protecting 100% of grasses by 2030”, Frédéric Villiers, head of the office, told AFP.
Efforts on both sides of the Mediterranean
“The aim is to obtain complete knowledge of the presence of seaweeds in the Mediterranean and the pressures they are exposed to, and then take measures to protect them,” Villiers added, with priorities being to “complete the mapping” and “quickly set up buoys (so that the boats can anchor from without throwing anchors into the water) in the countries that need it the most”, and “that there be unified systems from one country to another”.
“Corsica is home to 66% of the Posidonia on the Mediterranean coast, and it has pioneered the study of (these plants), with the first mapping of an entire region, since the 1990s,” said Catherine Biant.
The Balearic Islands, which contain 50% of the turf sites in all of Spain, were also pioneers in this field.
“Concretely, we conducted a comprehensive survey of all seagrass beds, distinguishing between those of high environmental quality, which are completely protected, and those of lower quality, where activity is Docking possible through buoy mooring”, detailing the measures taken since 2018 to protect this “unique ecosystem in the Mediterranean”.
“The most innovative aspect is the establishment of a monitoring and assistance service to inform recreational boats of the importance of Posidonia,” he added, explaining that the service was equipped with 18 boats in 2022 that carried out 201,832 operations.
However, he warned that “it is useless to protect this ecosystem in the Balearic Islands (…) if we do not make efforts in other places, not only at the level of the European Mediterranean, but also in the regions of the Maghreb and the Levant,” praising “Sharik good practices” within the network.
