Why is what is happening in the Mar Menor an international crisis? We interviewed Ramón Pagan, from SOS Mar Menor, looking for answers
Ramón Pagán, an industrial chemist by training, is now an activist with a cause, El Mar Menor. In this most popular Mediterranean salt lake, an international ecological bomb exploded, and he is among those who lead and promote the denunciation of those responsible and the search for solutions.
Ramón Pagan is part of the platform SOS Mar Menor, one of the most active associations in defense of that peculiar salt lake in Murcia which is suffocating.
In 2019 and 2021, the beaches of the Mar Menor were filled with tons, tons of dead fish. They had to be collected.
When the whole of Europe talks about Green Pacts, about watching the sea, about starting to change our relationship with the planet, in Murcia, in Cartagena, an ecological catastrophe is happening that does not allow us to look the other way, because the fish dead will come back.
We interviewed Ramón Pagan to learn the basics of what is happening in the Mar Menor, which is by no means a local drama. What is happening in this lagoon, an icon of Spanish popular tourism, opens an international melon that smells of fertilizers and manure.
“The ecological crisis of the Mar Menor is repeated with similar characteristics in Valencia, Catalonia, France, in numerous lakes in Europe and the United States”, explains Ramón Pagán. “Eutrophication” should be the word of the year.
How many dead fish did you collect on the beaches?
The official census of the Autonomous Community is about five and a half tons of dead fish collected on the coast. We believe there are many more, of course more than 8 tons.
But hey, let’s not get into these discrepancies. Also note that this is only the visible part. Everything that died at the bottom is dead. It decomposed. What is officially declared must represent 10% of the total. In other words, he calculates the enormous mortality that has occurred.
Do you necropsy the fish?
It’s useless to do autopsies, because they clearly die of asphyxiation. Just see how the animals arrive at the shore panting, looking for oxygen in the air because they can’t find it in the water. Well, the causes of this anoxia, I think you know them well.
I would like you to explain them in detail
The origin of all this problem, as in other parts of the world, is eutrophication due to excess nutrients.
The waters from the cultivated fields of Cartagena, with a very high nitrate contamination, is permanently and for many years reaching the Mar Menor. Just as nitrates favor the growth of lettuce or broccoli, they produce enormous growth in sea vegetation, especially sea-bottom algae. Thus, nitrates favor the growth of underwater meadows, just as they favor the growth of lettuce. This may sound like good news, but it’s the beginning of a drama. You will see…
These microscopic algae feed on the same nitrates as broccoli. So they multiply enormously and generate the famous ‘Green soup ‘”
When temperatures start to rise in summer, phytoplankton, composed of micro-organisms, single-celled algae, also grow and multiply in the sea. These microscopic algae feed on the same nitrates as broccoli. So they multiply enormously and generate the famous ‘Green soup ‘.
This is phase 2 of the tragedy. The water becomes very dark and the light no longer reaches the bottom of the sea. So all this well-nourished pasture, which has grown a lot thanks to nitrates, stops being able to photosynthesize and dies, rots. When it decomposes, it needs oxygen. It is a process similar to combustion: it steals the oxygen that is in the water. And that’s where everything, all the unique species that live closer to the bottom, run out of oxygen. The sea thus becomes a toxic liquid for its inhabitants. That’s why we see fish trying to find oxygen in the air, panting, until they die on the beaches. And this sad story is what we are seeing.
It is a process that took place in 2019 with massive mortality throughout the northern area of the Mar Menor. It was repeated in 2021, with another massive death in the southern area. And this will be repeated, because the problems at the source have not stopped.
Have you ever sampled water from the waste going to the Mar Menor?
We have often taken water samples, mainly from spills going into the Mar Menor. All samples are contaminated with nitrates to a greater or lesser extent. The numbers range from 150 milligrams of nitrates per liter to 200 milligrams. The maximum amount authorized by the European Union for discharges from land to sea water is 50 milligrams per liter. In other words, that number is at least tripling.
Does this only happen on the Mar Menor?
No. This is happening in more and more places around the world. There’s a dramatic case, on a lake in southern California… I don’t remember the name.
lake salton
Yes, exactly. It was a lake that formed accidentally, it was full of life. But once it came to life, it died completely from excess nutrients. It is also happening in the Great Lakes of the United States, in Brittany, in another tiny ‘Mar Menor’ near Marseille, also highly polluted by nutrients. And here, l’Albufera de Valencia also shows signs of that. There are numerous episodes around the world.
Is excess nutrient history in the Mar Menor?
The opposite. The Mar Menor had no nutrients, because the agriculture around it was rainfed. When you do rainfed agriculture, you hardly use fertilizers, because they are not profitable.
So it was an absolutely transparent, crystalline sea, you could see the bottom walking. From the top you could see the crabs, the sole, in short, all the marine life without having to snorkel.
What happened?
Well, above all came the Tejo-Segura transfer and, with the arrival of cheap water, the irrigated hectares began to grow. In successive periods and with different degrees of legality, crops were increased to approach the current 60,000 hectares. 60,000 hectares dedicated to intensive cultivation, which produce four crops a year, something impossible if not for the force of fertilizing the land with nitrates and phosphates.
These are the nitrates that feed algae.
Some of these nitrates end up in different ways in the Mar Menor and eutrophicate its waters (produce an overabundance of nutrients). It is estimated that of the total nutrients that reach the Mar Menor, 85% come from industrial agriculture. If European regulations for the use of fertilizers had been followed, they would not have caused this disaster.
Did they also reach the underground aquifer under the fields of Cartagena?
The aquifer is highly polluted. And the problem is that its waters are so high that they definitely enter the Mar Menor, with all its nitrate load.
And if fertilizers were reduced to the point required by law, would it help if the aquifer continued to release nitrates like a sponge?
This is one of the most important discussion topics. Some say no. But let me mention a study carried out by an agronomist at the Polytechnic University of Valencia: he started to cultivate a farm, but assuming that he would only use the 170 kilos of nitrate per hectare and year established by European regulations for areas declared to be contaminated.
He recorded how the aquifer evolved month after month, year after year. He took measurements in various areas of the Cartagena field and observed how, during the first few years, the amounts of nitrate in groundwater were reduced by more than two-thirds. He found that in nine years the aquifer would have levels below those established by the European Union of 50 milligrams per liter.
There is another thing in our favor, they are the bacteria that live underground and that, when there is no oxygen, use nitrates as “fuel”, converting them into nitrogen gas, which goes away, is eliminated. It is a completely natural process that would help to recover water from the aquifer, but for this to be possible, we must turn off the nitrates that arrive in bulk from the cultivated fields and allow time for the bacteria to do so. their work.
This obviously contradicts the position of the agro-industrial sector, which goes on to say that the aquifer has been lost since historical times, and that it can no longer be fixed, which is absolutely false.
And wouldn’t it be enough to open the doors of the Mar Menor and connect it to the Mediterranean?
The Mar Menor is not the bathtub at home, if it’s dirty you can’t open it and throw shit next door.
There is another reason why it is not recommended that technicians expose. The Mar Menor now has much lower salinity than in the 1970s, and this high salt content was its safeguard. Opening it to the Mediterranean would lower this salinity even further, which could have even worse consequences for its biodiversity.
Furthermore, even if we wanted to, communication between the Mar Menor and the Mediterranean cannot be achieved by opening a collar.
The Mar Menor-Mediterranean communication system at this time is produced through traditional ravines that have always existed, natural. One of them, Estácio, looks like Ebro. What goes in and out there! Impressive. I have a small sailboat and sometimes with an 8 horsepower engine I can’t stand the current that comes there. This collar is 80% of communication between the two seas.
There is also an artificial canyon, the Marchamalo canyon, which is further south. Look, they call it Marchamalo because it never worked well, it’s permanently flooded with sand. It is now partially flooded. But even if it worked well, communication with the Mediterranean would barely increase 5%. So it doesn’t seem easy to open the bathtub.
Ramón, let me ask you a personal question to finish, what is the name of your ship?
My little boat is called La raya azul.
The blue band? why?
When the Mar Menor was crystalline and transparent, where there was less depth, it was sand colored because you could see the sand at the bottom. When you pass some distance from shore, the depth changes and then turns blue. So there was a line that separated the shallow from the deep. And that blue band was important. When I was a child, my mother told me: “Never reach the blue line”, among other things because I couldn’t stand it. So my little boat is called that. The blue band of the Mar Menor is gone now, everything is now a solid dark brown.