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Date Published: 12/04/2021
ARCHIVED - Regional government spending 1.1 million euros on Mar Menor jellyfish nets
The nets will protect 43 kilometres of beaches within the Mar Menor
The regional government of Murcia has announced that the annual programme to net the principal beaches within the Mar Menor will go ahead as normal this summer, and will spend
more than 1.1 million euros across the next two summers, marking out the bathing areas and on the maintenance and cleaning of equipment.
The installation of nets to protect bathers against jellyfish along 43 kilometers of shoreline in bathing areas of the Mar Menor will protect a total of 60 beaches and coves.
The contract includes the preparation, installation, maintenance, uninstallation, cleaning and storage of the jellyfish nets and the marking of the bathing areas, also including the organization and coordination of said works, as well as the acquisition of the necessary material.
Most of the netting panels have a variable height of between 1.5 and 7 meters, leaving the deepest 50 centimeters of the net folded on the ground. Prior to fixing the nets in the sea, the delimiting markings will be installed for each of the beach enclosures, with buoys of about 400 and 600 millimeters. The buoys will be fixed to the anchors already installed using galvanized steel chains of about 8 millimeters.
In the last couple of years the numbers of jellyfish in the lagoon have been much lower and it has not been necessary to undertake the mass extractions necessary a few years ago when fishing vessels from the fleet of San pedro del Pinatar were called in to fish tons of jellyfish out of the water.
Numbers have been a low lower in the last two years.
The non-native species 'Cotylorhiza tuberculata' and 'Rhizostoma pulmo' entered the lagoon in the mid-1980s from the Mediterranean via the golas, the water channels running between the Mar and Mar Menor, the additional warmth of the waters and safety from predators enabling their numbers to increase substantially.
Continuous fishing for a period of several years has now reduced their numbers and although there are always complaints that nets are removed too soon in the autumn, the nets are a welcome addition to the beaches of the Mar Menor, guaranteeing safe bathing.
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