The European project LIFE INTEMARES, coordinated by the Biodiversity Foundation of the Ministry for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge (MITECO), has added four new partners to advance in the expansion of marine protected areas and their effective management. Specifically, the Junta de Andalucía, through the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Sustainable Development and the Environment and Water Agency; the AZTI technology centre and the Polytechnic Universities of Valencia and Alicante.
These entities join the team of partners that has been working in a coordinated manner since the beginning of the project in 2017 and that integrates a diverse representation of competences and interests.
The Ministry itself, which holds the competences in the management of the Natura Network in the marine environment through the General Directorate of Biodiversity, Forests and Desertification; the Spanish Institute of Oceanography (IEO), a benchmark entity in Spain in the scientific knowledge of the sea; the Spanish Fisheries Confederation (CEPESCA), the most representative national fishing business organisation in the European Union; as well as two NGOs with extensive experience in the conservation of marine biodiversity, such as SEO/BirdLife and WWF-Spain.
These new additions strengthen research and conservation of marine biodiversity, new technologies for monitoring habitats and species, as well as governance and institutional cooperation.
PROMOTING BLUE ENTREPRENEURSHIP
In particular, the Regional Government of Andalusia will develop actions to improve the knowledge and monitoring of marine habitats. It will also involve the various agents of the territory in the management of protected areas, undertake awareness-raising actions and ensure the implementation of mechanisms to mitigate the impact of recreational activities on habitats of community interest, mainly posidonia meadows, reefs and underwater caves. It will also promote blue entrepreneurship in Natura Network sites in the marine environment of Andalusia.
For its part, AZTI participates together with the IEO in the research campaigns that are being developed for the declaration of new protected marine areas, specifically, in the Cap Bretón submarine canyon system, which is home to species and habitats of high ecological value. It also participates in the tagging and monitoring actions of the Balearic shearwater, together with MITECO and SEO/Birdlife, to learn more about this seabird, the most endangered in Europe.
The University of Alicante also works together with the IEO, through its mixed unit, on oceanographic campaigns in Cabo Tiñoso, in Murcia, with the aim of increasing the knowledge of marine habitats and species in the area between the Escarpment of Mazarrón, Seco de Palos and the field of pockmarks, underwater structures caused by gas emissions.
Finally, the Polytechnic University of Valencia also collaborates with the IEO in the technological development of a marine observation network based on platforms that allow the study of the dynamics of the seabed, current fields, suspended matter and underwater noise, as well as in the use of unmanned underwater vehicles for the monitoring of habitats and species. They also develop electronic and acoustic tags in the monitoring of species to study the connectivity between protected areas.
INCREASE IN MARINE PROTECTED AREA
Since the beginning of the project, in 2017, more than 770 organisations have been directly involved in the LIFE INTEMARES project, which have participated in various actions to ensure that the increase in marine protected areas is associated with the improvement of knowledge, as well as the strengthening of coordination and a governance structure from a participatory approach that integrates all managers. agents and users of the sea.
In this regard, Spain is making progress in the priority of reaching 30% of marine protected and well-managed areas by 2030, as set out in the European Union’s Biodiversity Strategy and the Declaration of the Climate and Environmental Emergency declared by the Government of Spain.
In just a few years, Spain has gone from protecting less than 1% of the marine surface to more than 12% today. Thanks to this great achievement, Spain is one of the few European countries that has exceeded the threshold of 10% coverage to which it committed itself in the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
With the LIFE INTEMARES project, Spain sets itself the goal of reaching a coverage of more than 15% of the marine protected area in 2023.La integration of funds, policies and actors is one of the foundations on which it is based to achieve this goal.
SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE FOR THE PROTECTION OF SPECIES
To improve scientific knowledge in the marine environment, various actions have been carried out, including 16 research campaigns. Among others, Cabo Tiñoso, Cap Bretón and the seamounts of Mallorca have been explored, to learn about the habitats and species present in these spaces for their possible declaration as Natura 2000 Network spaces.
In the conservation of species, actions have been developed to ensure the survival of the nacra, an endemic mollusc of the Mediterranean in a critical state of extinction. In addition, the first steps have been taken for the development and updating of conservation strategies and plans, such as that of the porpoise or the macaw Patella ferruginea, among others, which allow measures to be adopted to reduce the degree of threat to species and habitats of Community interest included in the Habitats and Birds Directives.
Likewise, 10 participatory processes have been initiated to actively involve socio-economic sectors and citizens in the development of strategies and management plans that make it possible to make uses and activities compatible with the conservation of natural values in marine protected areas, among other actions.
