Whether they navigate professionally as sailors and ship captains or recreationally as owners and users of sailboats, motorboats, yachts, and similar vessels, you can surely agree that most sailors can be defined as people who love the sea and want to preserve it. However, this love for the sea and sailing often brings them close to natural marine habitats, including Posidonia meadows, which they unknowingly destroy.
Many sailors are unaware that Posidonia meadows, over which they sail and where they frequently anchor, play a crucial role in the marine ecosystem. Besides providing habitat for many marine species, these seagrass meadows reduce coastal erosion, protect beaches, produce oxygen, and improve water quality.
Sunce and partners have a mission to inform sailors
To preserve the slow-growing Posidonia meadows, which are vital for the health of marine ecosystems and coastal communities, sailors should adopt sustainable practices at sea. For example, they should avoid anchoring in Posidonia meadows and use ecological moorings where it is possible. It is also important to regularly maintain vessels to prevent fuel, oil, and other chemical spills into the sea, which can harm Posidonia.
But to start doing all of this, they first need to educate themselves and become aware of the importance of Posidonia and how their activities at sea can impact this plant. The Sunce association takes this task very seriously, and this summer, in collaboration with the Public Institution for Management of Protected Areas in Split-Dalmatia County, “Sea and Karst”, as part of the Interreg project EFFICIENTN2K, we organized information campaigns at sea. These campaigns, within the Natura 2000 area, aim to show that cooperation at sea can significantly contribute to effectiveness of protection.
– The focus of joint actions on the sea is to inform sailors about the importance of Posidonia meadows as a priority EU habitat type and the impact of free anchoring on the state of the meadows. Posidonia is also on the list of strictly protected species in Croatia! – said Matea Špika, Expert Associate and Substitute Head of Nature Conservation Department, who has been working on this issue for years.
The information campaign at Zlatni rat was very successful
The first information campaign was conducted on Friday, July 19, at Zlatni rat, which belongs to the Zlatni rat marine ecological network area on Brač. Besides Sunce and the Public Institution “Sea and Karst,” Grabov rat d.o.o., the Municipality of Bol, and the Split-Dalmatia County (Department of Tourism, Maritime Affairs, and Transport) also participated in the campaign.
– The campaign went great, we addressed sailors, distributed flyers about proper anchoring, and handed out waterproof bags as gifts. Most people accepted our explanation very well; some had already heard about Posidonia and said they avoid anchoring in it. We invited them to become Posidonia keepers! – said Ana Miletić, Expert Associate at Nature Conservation Department at Sunce.
– Yes, sailors reacted very positively. Everyone, whom we suggested not to anchor where Posidonia meadows are present, lifted their moorings without hesitation and moved to another location. They only asked: ‘Why do we have to move?’ and ‘Where can we anchor instead?’. And these two questions are the foundation of our mission to inform sailors. Namely, to adopt sustainable practices at sea, sailors need to know why and how, – added Jelena Kurtović Mrčelić from the Public Institution “Sea and Karst”.
We were not the only ones warning “improperly parked” sailors that day. Tino Pavišić from Grabov rat shared with us his daily experience with uninformed sailors.
– You won’t believe it, but I often have to explain to sailors what the symbol of the upside-down anchor means. When I point them out this sign, I get responses like: ‘we didn’t see the sign’, ‘doesn’t that sign mean allowed anchoring?’, ‘it’s not marked on my charts’ and so on. However, after explaining that it means they are not allowed to anchor there and listing the reasons for having this sign, many sailors respect it, lift their moorings, and leave. But there are always a few who say: ‘we’re only here for another hour’, ‘a few years ago we could anchor here’, ‘we were told we could anchor here’ and so on. There are no acceptable excuses: Posidonia needs to be protected, and order must be maintained. Everyone wants to visit our most famous beach up close, but if we don’t follow the rules and instructions, in a few years, there will be no beach to visit, nor underwater habitats for marine animals to live in, – said Pavišić.
If the local community is not ready to cooperate, it is hard to achieve anything
The main goal of the EFFICIENTN2K project (under which this campaign was conducted) is to improve monitoring and enforcement of protection in protected coastal and marine Natura 2000 areas through improved cooperation between competent organizations, individuals, and civil society organizations involved in sea protection. In collaboration with project partners, we concluded that one of the possibly most effective strategies for achieving this goal is precisely local. Local awareness-raising campaigns about the importance of Posidonia meadows have proven to be extremely important and necessary to act preventively and to work on reducing the negative impact of nautical tourism through networking and cooperation of responsible institutions.
– We noticed that those managing the Zlatni rat area are extremely informed about Posidonia, and that is actually crucial — that the local community is aware and oriented towards this goal because we, at the regional or state level, can have positive actions, but if there is no responsiveness from local authorities and those operating at the site itself, then it’s all in vain, – commented Kurtović Mrčelić.
The next information campaign is planned for August, and we hope it will be as successful as this one. To find out how it will look, follow us on our social networks, where we run an online summer campaign on sustainable practices at sea, aimed at sailors and all sea lovers, A di se ti sidriš? (And Where Do You Anchor?).