Only 1 in 11 hectares of protected areas in the world are marine, while in Spain this figure drops to less than 1 in 33. In addition, in the European Union, only 9 of the more than 200 habitats included in its nature conservation legislation are marine. This enormous difference, which has led to only 0.5% of the total extension of seas and oceans having some form of protection, is what has led Oceana and the Biodiversity Foundation to propose a considerable advance in legislation for the conservation of marine biodiversity and to reduce deficiencies in ocean protection. tripling the number of habitats that should be protected in the European Union.

In an event chaired by the Secretary General for Territory and Biodiversity, Antonio Serrano, the Director of the Biodiversity Foundation, María Artola, and the Director of Oceana for Europe, Xavier Pastor, today presented “Habitats in danger. Oceana’s protection proposal”, a scientific report resulting from the research carried out by the Oceana team and supported by the Biodiversity Foundation. It is a proposal to protect some thirty habitats, most of which are not included in the Habitats Directive, and which, given their natural value, Oceana considers should be taken into account.

To prepare this proposal, and together with the bibliographic compilation work, Oceana has travelled nearly 10,000 miles of European marine waters, has carried out more than 200 hours of dives, has used an underwater robot to access deep seabeds, and has collected information on the most important and vulnerable habitats, including more than 100 hours of underwater recording and more than 5,000 photographs.

The need for greater representation of marine habitats in the European environment has led Oceana to document in successive campaigns some of the elements necessary to take into account and support the process of revising the Habitats Directive initiated in 2003. The lack of protection of certain seabeds in the European framework is one of the most serious shortcomings of the current Habitats Directive, a fundamental tool for the EU to meet the objective of halting the loss of biodiversity by 2010.

Scientific studies have highlighted the sharp loss of biodiversity in the oceans and the sharp decline in fish stocks, most of which could collapse before 2050. For this reason, the United Nations has also called for an increase in marine protected areas, as one of the measures to stop the deterioration of the seas.

In the report, Oceana proposes the following types of habitats, which could be considered of Community interest, and among which are the main marine ecosystems: seamounts, building gases, pelagic habitats, marine deserts, coral reefs (including deep-sea corals), gorgonian gardens, sponge fields, reefs of bivalve molluscs, polychaetes and cirriped crustaceans, green algae meadows, red algae concretions (coralligenous, maërl communities, etc.) and laminaria forests. Other habitats that should also be considered include brown algae undergrowth, mixed meadows of photophilous alphas and/or mixed grasses of algae, sheets of filamentous algae, intertidal ponds, habitats with large colonial species of hydrozoans, bryozoans and tunicates, and colonial anthozoans.

The aforementioned habitats are true biodiversity hotspots and are home to fragile ecosystems that require urgent protection. In summary, an attempt has been made to document a representation of the geomorphological, hydromorphological and biogenic structures that constitute a fundamental integral part of the natural heritage present in the European environment.

In addition, during the research process, the possibility arose of carrying out a study on the migratory movements of turtles, as well as their behavior within the structural preferences of their populations taking into account variables such as water surface temperature, depths, etc. The main objective of this work, embodied in the report “Turtles. Migrations and habitat preferences of the loggerhead turtle in the Mediterranean”, is to contribute to conservation strategies that prevent accidental captures of these animals in different fishing gears.

The tagging of the turtles has been carried out by applying an external (metallic) mark, a subcutaneous (microchip) and satellite transmitter marks on the shells of nine loggerhead turtles captured and released between the Alboran Sea and the Balearic Sea.