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Jellyfish nets finally going up in Mar Menor at these 5 coastal areas
The Mar Menor has been without jellyfish nets since 2021
The nets which are placed in the water to stop jellyfish from approaching the shore have finally been placed in the Mar Menor after jellyfish populations were deemed to be large enough and close enough to the edges of the lagoon to warrant them.
However, for now they are only being installed in certain areas that really need them.
It is only around San Pedro del Pinatar where these nets are being installed, specifically off the beaches of Playa de los Villananitos, Playa de la Mota and La Puntica.
That’s because, this summer, the jellyfish have mainly ben focused around the northern part of the Mar Menor.
These nets have not been installed since 2021 due to fears that they would contribute to making the water quality worse due to the accumulation and decomposition of the biomass that grows thanks to an excess of nutrients in the Mar Menor.
Local councils opted two years ago not to request the deployment of these barriers anymore, but the overabundance of jellyfish in 2023 made swimming a nuisance.
For that reason, the approach has been changed this summer and the Murcia Regional Ministry of the Environment and the Councils of towns around the Mar Menor, with the approval of the scientific committee of the Mar Menor, have opted to carry out what they call a “surgical operation” by installing nets only in the most affected places.
On Friday August 2, work will begin in the north of La Manga, specifically on the Playa de Veneziola and close to the port of Tomás Maestre.
Fewer fried egg jellyfish than in 2023
The latest research by experts from the University of Murcia, who carried out population sampling a fortnight ago, confirms that the highest abundances of the jellyfish Cotylorhiza tuberculata or ‘fried egg’ jellyfish, have been found in the northern part of the Mar Menor, with “swarm formations and punctual aggregations” as had occurred at the beginning of the summer of 2023.
The waters surrounding the inner islands of the Mar Menor also have quite a large amount, and the maximum peak in jellyfish density detected is up to 798 individuals per hundred cubic metres.
The number of jellyfish counted in six monitoring stations reached 82,673, most of them small in size, measuring less than 10 centimetres.
“This figure is considerably lower than the average abundance data recorded in mid-July 2023; it should be noted that the bloom of 2024 occurred two weeks earlier than last year, in mid-June,” say the researchers Ángel Pérez Ruzafa, Manuel Rosendo Conde and Marcos Lorente.
The lowest number of fried egg jellyfish has been recorded in the eastern part of the Mar Menor, along the La Manga strip.
Image: Ayuntamiento de San Pedro del Pinatar
