In the Sado Estuary, there is an ecosystem that is being damaged by anchors and mooring cables. A group of volunteers has been helping to preserve this environment, in partnership with a non-governmental organization.
On the surface, the scene is calm, but underwater there are signs of destruction. Seagrass meadows are essential for several species, both from an ecological and economic point of view, but they are being torn apart by the constant movement of anchors and mooring lines.
“It’s a prairie measuring almost 17 hectares, with 17 football fields, and in which we can find all the marine species that exist in Portugal. (…) What these anchors and the anchors’ mooring cables do is that they scrape the seabed, damaging the grasses, breaking them and also damaging their roots”, explains Lia Neves, marine educator at Ocean Alive.
On the ground, volunteer employees put on their suits to get into the water and change this scenario. At sea, they place so-called friendly buoys, which make the cables float instead of scraping the sand.
With the storms at the beginning of the year, the direct impact on the prairie is still being assessed but the rise in water levels, together with the decrease in salinity, has already caused the death of several species, which reinforces the importance of this intervention.
