2024-05-03 15:49:03
(ANSA) – BRINDISI, 03 MAY – Countering trawling which destroys the fauna and flora of the seabed: this is the objective of a project carried out by the consortium of Torre Guaceto, the reserve located in the north of Brindisi, financed by Blue Marine Foundation. The system works with patented cement systems, which therefore do not release substances into the sea, equipped with large hooks designed specifically to tear the nets used by poachers to rake the seabed. In this way, the marine fauna and habitats of the protected area are protected. Trawling, the consortium explains, is a “fishing practice with the highest possible environmental impact”, and is prohibited “in all Italian marine protected areas and is permitted outside them only at a depth greater than 50 meters, due to the protection of the seabed”.
“We found signs of trawling in the coral area, the marine habitat which together with the posidonia is the most important in the protected area. Here – explained the director of the Torre Guaceto management consortium, Alessandro Ciccolella – organisms live animals that are extremely fragile and have slow growth, therefore easy to destroy and difficult to restore”. “Trawling ‘plows’ the seabed, capturing – he adds – every type of marine animal, not only fish of every species and size, often still very small, but also the organisms that make up our coral reef, the Mediterranean version of the reef coral, the habitat with the highest level of biodiversity”. “We are enthusiastic – reported Giulia Bernardi, project manager in Italy of the Blue Marine Foundation – to have continued the collaboration with the Torre Guaceto Management Consortium to discourage illegal trawling activity in a protected area rich in biodiversity” . (HANDLE).
2024-05-03 15:49:03