The Mar Menor Monitoring Committee does not believe that a new episode of anoxia will be brought forward. Last year it took place in August. Despite this, they recognise that the process of eutrophication has begun to occur due to the continuous influx of nutrients into the lagoon and the increase in temperature.
This is already causing an increase in the chemical demand for oxygen in the deeper layers of the Mar Menor: the biological processes of organic matter propagation are accelerating and this is the prelude to its decomposition by heat. The equation is completed, as we know from what has happened in previous years, by anoxia, as explained by Emilio María Dolores, spokesman for the Mar Menor Monitoring Committee.
In the last few weeks the experts of the Mar Menor Monitoring Committee have been aware of 3 pockets of water with very low levels of oxygen, with hypoxia. These have ended up dissolving due to the action of the wind. The pockets are caused by the decomposition of algae that the General Directorate of the Mar Menor is trying to contain. In April alone, 2,400 tonnes of the ‘Chaetomorpha linum’ variety have been removed.
Meanwhile, the Monitoring Committee is waiting for the Ministry for Ecological Transition to authorise the trial of microbubbles to oxygenate the water. The General Directorate of the Mar Menor has issued a tender for a 400,000 euro trial at the Las Isletas yacht club on a volume of water of 150,000 cubic metres. They believe that this could work to dissolve small bodies of water with anoxia.
Committee spokesman Emilio María Dolores acknowledges that the turbidity levels have not worsened because less water has reached the lagoon through rainwater runoff than last year. Despite this, the Albujón wadi has deposited 5 times more polluted water in the Mar Menor during the first part of the year than in 2021.
On the other hand, the water table in Campo de Cartagena continues to rise, according to the experience of the Committee in a farm that the University of Murcia has in the Cartagena deputation of La Palma.