Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

CLIMATE CRISIS

Illegal water use dries out key Spanish lagoon

The largest permanent lagoon in drought-hit southern Spain's Doñana natural park, home of one of Europe's largest wetlands, has completely dried out for the second summer in a row.

Published: 12 August 2023 10:30 CEST
Illegal water use dries out key Spanish lagoon
The cracked dry bottom of the Lucio del Lobo pool, at the Donana National Park in Aznalcaraz, southern Spain. (Photo by CRISTINA QUICLER / AFP)

A huge patch of cracked white earth has replaced the waters of the Santa Olalla lagoon, which usually houses abundant aquatic life and huge colonies of migrating birds.

The lagoon, which once covered around 45 hectares (110 acres), has been shrinking in recent years but this is the first time that it has dried out for two consecutive years, according to the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC).

Scientists blame the lagoon’s disappearance on a prolonged drought combined with the overexploitation of aquifers for farming and tourism.

“Recent years have been very dry, which is not rare for a Mediterranean climate,” Carmen Diaz Paniagua, a researcher at the Doñana Biological Station, told AFP.

Most lagoons in the reserve are temporary, filling with rainwater in winter and then drying out in the summer but a few contain water year-round, providing an important refuge for animal life.

“The real problem is the mismanagement of the aquifers. We don’t even know how much water is being extracted because there are many illegal wells,” she added.

READ ALSO: Where in Spain are there currently water restrictions?

The Doñana national park is surrounded by a sea of greenhouses and the Matalascanas resort town is located less than a kilometre from the northernmost lagoons of the reserve.

“This is not a natural thing happening only because of climate change. It can be reversed, if we can reduce the water extractions the lagoon could resist,” said Diaz Paniaga.

Water use restrictions are in place on other parts of Spain but that is not the case in towns near Doñana where beaches still operate showers, she added.

The Dona reserve boasts marshlands, scrub woodland and beaches and is home to deer, badgers and endangered species including the Spanish imperial eagle and the Iberian lynx.

But at the Santa Olalla lagoon where wild horses once drank water surrounded by storks and flamingos, they now graze alone on the few tufts of grass they find growing from the cracked earth.

READ ALSO: Spanish government approves €2 billion funding package to fight drought effects 

Despite warnings from UNESCO and the European Commission, the conservative regional government of Andalusia where Doñana is located is pushing to extend irrigation rights near the park.

A draft law currently making its way through the regional parliament would regularise hundreds of hectares of berry farmland currently irrigated by illegal wells.

Defenders of the proposal argue it will aid those who unfairly missed out during a previous regularisation of farms in the area put in place in 2014 under a Socialist government.

“The water management policy is really not conducive to the conservation of Doñana’s lagoons,” said Diaz Paniagua.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

ENVIRONMENT

Why do orcas keep attacking boats off the coast of Spain?

After a spate of boat attacks in 2023, orcas in the Strait of Gibraltar have again been targeting small vessels in recent months. Scientists have several theories as to why the world's biggest dolphins are displaying this strange behaviour.

Published: 26 July 2024 12:36 CEST
Why do orcas keep attacking boats off the coast of Spain?

According to marine biologists, orca encounters with humans have been on the rise since 2020, and over the last four years an orca pod in the Strait of Gibraltar have been ramming boats, even causing some of them to sink.

Research from GT Atlantic Orca, a group that tracks orca populations, have reported nearly 700 interactions of orca attacks on ships in this area since 2020.

In 2023, there were a total of 53 boat incidents involving killer whales, and over the last four years a total of seven boats have been sunk and many more damaged.

Map showing orca collisions and incidents with boats in the Strait of Gibraltar in recent months. Source: Orca Ibérica

In May 2024, a pod in the Strait of Gibraltar struck again, sinking their first yacht of the season, and within a few days many more attacks had been reported.

Another boat sinking occurred in mid-July, and both fisherman and pleasure boats owners are concerned about the possibility of more this summer.

The main question that scientists are asking is why this is happening and what’s the reason behind the increase in incidents?

There are three main theories according to some of the world’s leading marine biologists.

The first theory is that it’s down to an orca named White Gladis, the matriarch of a pod of killer whales in the Gibraltar Strait.

Scientists believe that this orca may have had a run in with boats in the past and possibly been injured by a rudder or propeller, causing her severe trauma. It is thought this caused her to start attacking boats, passing on this behaviour to her offspring and other members of the pod.

Other biologists argue that killer whales don’t seek revenge the way humans might and believe that it’s all simply one big game to them for the ‘teenage’ members of the pod, imitating one another’s behaviour.

READ ALSO: Spain’s police bust gang that faked orca attacks to smuggle drugs

They are just playing with the boat and are not interested in hurting the people on board at all, they claim. In fact, when members of the crew have abandoned the boats in life rafts, the orcas have simply ignored them and carried on ramming the boats. 

Co-founder of the Andenes Whale Centre in (Norway) Hanne Strager is one biologist who believes in this theory.

He told National Geographic that there was no aggressive intent in the orcas: “When you interact regularly with animals, and you are used to reading them, you can sense an aggressive intent, and they don’t have it all”, he said. 

Some believe that it could be that Gladis is simply playing too and her pod are just copying her behaviour. 

The third theory proposed is that the attacks are down to declining tuna populations due to overfishing by humans.  

The Association in Defence of Urban Trees, Biodiversity and the Environment (DAUBMA) of Ceuta has linked the attacks by orcas with the decline in the number of tunas in the area.

READ MORE: Scientists puzzled by killer whale boat attacks off Spain

Environmentalists have also warned that these attacks “are cause-effect of human super-predation on tuna, since the increase of orcas in coastal areas is due to uncontrolled fishing of tuna”.  This is “having an impact on the orcas’ prey, with the killer whales having to teach their youngsters to hunt, so if we continue fishing in the same way, this same thing will happen,” they point out.

Essentially the orcas’ food is located in traps close to where these boats sail.  

Tuna is fished in a unique way in the Strait of Gibraltar, using the ancient Almadraba method, a traditional fishing technique used to catch enormous quantities of bluefin tuna on their annual migration through the area by setting up huge nets and traps.

READ MORE: Spain’s 3,000-year-old tuna fishing tradition

Orcas, often called killer whales, are not actually whales but the largest species in the dolphin family. They are an apex predator but they’re not generally considered a danger to humans as there have been very few fatal attacks, especially in the wild. 

According to the UK’s Whale and Dolphin Conversation, they got the name ‘killer whale’ from ancient sailors who observed orcas hunting and preying on large whale species, and the word orca itself derives from “Orcus”, the Roman god of death and the underworld.

Many marine biologists are against orcas being named killer whales as they believe the moniker demonises them.

SHOW COMMENTS