The Mayor of Santa Pola, Loreto Serrano, has asked the Regional Government for an exception for the restriction on the collection of posidonia oceanica that will come into force in May, which restricts the collection of the seaweed from all the beaches of the Valencian Community for five months a year, and on urban beaches from October 15 to March 15.
Loreto Serrano said that this exception has been requested from the Ministry of the Environment and that Santa Pola be allowed to remove the algae throughout the year because the coastal town is the one that accumulates the most algae by far of the entire Valencian Community, because of its proximity to the Tabarca Island nature reserve.
These accumulations of posidonia protect the beach against low intensity storms. In addition, they bring sand to the beach and to the dunes.
Serrano wanted to emphasise that the removal of algae in Santa Pola does not cause the beaches to reduce their amount of natural sand due to the large amount of algae that comes from Tabarca.
In addition, as the beaches are semi-closed, the algae cannot return to the open sea due to the force of the tides, so there is so much more deposited on the urban beaches of Santa Pola, and it affects the sand minimally. Shortly after this, the vast majority of this sand returns to the beaches.
Along with this, the mayor has recalled that in Santa Pola there are companies that reuse the large amounts of algae extracted for the production of fertilisers, natural substrate and even applications of algae for animals.
