I am in love with this sea. I live for it and I live off it. If they took it away from me, I would die, says Pedro Martinez-Banos, gazing out across the sparkling waters of Spain’s Mar Menor.
A fisherman all his life, the 50-year-old father of three grew up on the shores of the Small Sea in the southeastern coastal region of Murcia, casting his nets to bring in a catch to support his family.
It had been a good year for him, his small boat bringing in about 100kg a day. But that all changed on October 12 when millions of fish and crustaceans washed up on the Mar Menor’s northern shores, dead or dying.
It is the worst thing that can happen to a fisherman, the worst thing your eyes can see, a catastrophe, he recalled. It was like someone was dying, as if you yourself were dying.
Many people were in tears that day as the Mar Menor spat out the sealife that had been thriving there, in a huge blow to the coastal lagoon whose warm climate and sandy beaches have proven a tourism draw, earning it the name the jewel in the crown.
Beneath the calm of one of Europe’s largest saltwater lagoons, whose coastline stretches 70km, a toxic storm has long been brewing, the product of years of nutrient pollution from intensive agriculture and rampant urban development.
Experts say the fish died of suffocation, caused by a phenomenon known as eutrophication, an environmental hazard that causes aquatic ecosystems to collapse due to a lack of oxygen in the water.
With scientists warning that global warming is set to increase such phenomena, it is a topic likely to be on the agenda at the UN climate change summit in Madrid.
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