A “sailing expedition” with a “scientific character” will make “the map of marine litter” of the coasts of Portugal and Spain for the next ten months, in an initiative announced this Wednesday in San Sebastián, in the Spanish Basque Country.
The initiative “spain blueits protagonist is the Spaniard Nacho Dean, who has already traveled around the world on foot and has joined the planet’s continents by swimming, crossing straits and other points, with the aim of raising awareness about climate change, documenting its impacts in different regions of the balloon.
On this occasion, Nacho Dean and a team that includes researchers in the area of the oceans will tour the coasts of the Iberian Peninsula and the Spanish archipelagos of the Canary Islands (in the Atlantic) and the Balearic Islands (in the Mediterranean), to collect samples of garbage and contamination and thus build a “marine litter map“, according to a statement released this day by the “Blue Spain” initiative.
This “expedition”, which has the support of the University of Cádiz, the Higher Council for Scientific Research of Spain and the Spanish Institute of Oceanography, among other entities, will take ten months to complete and will collect three “samples” of garbage and contamination in each of the Spanish regions and in Portugal, one sample at the mouth of a river, another in a coastal town and the third in a “virgin area“.
In Portugal, this expedition will take place in December of this year and the samples will be collected in Porto, at the mouth of the Tagus and in the Parque Natural do Sudoeste Alentejano.
The “Blue Spain” project starts this month in the Spanish Basque Country and will travel along the coast of the Iberian Peninsula, the Canary Islands and the Balearic Islands, until it ends in Catalonia.
Lots of three samples will be collected in the Basque Country, Cantabria, Asturias, Galicia, Portugal, the Canary Islands, Andalusia, Murcia, the Balearic Islands, the Valencian Community and Catalonia.
Among the objectives of “Blue Spain” are “to prepare a report that supports the declaration of 30% of these spaces as Marine Natural Parks and Protected Marine Areas” and to record pollution levels, percentages of oxygen in the waters, losses of biodiversity, sea level rise or the impacts of urban construction and tourism.
The expedition will receive personalities on board”from the world of culture, adventure and digital natives“According to the same statement, the project will be supported in the different cities it passes through and conferences and other initiatives dedicated to sea pollution and climate change, such as beach cleaning, will be promoted at various points.
“It is a challenge whose main objective is to raise awareness about plastic pollution,” said Nacho Dean, quoted in the note released today.
“It is crucial to publicize the damage caused by marine debris,” he said, after recalling that each year more than eight million tons of plastic reach the sea.
Nacho Dean, 42, is considered in Spain as a “adventurer, naturalist and explorer“, is dedicated to outreach projects related to the environment, gives conferences in companies and universities, has published two books and has already been nominated for the prestigious Princess of Asturias Awards, which distinguish personalities and entities from different fields.
Source: Observadora
