Press Releases
Friday, February 1, 2019
Spain to create second-largest marine national park in the Mediterranean, south of Mallorca
, making the area of Cabrera National Park nine times larger and taking the total area protected to 90,794 hectares. The park, located south of Mallorca, will offer the highest level of legal protection for threatened marine life, including corals, dolphins and whales. Oceana congratulates the Spanish government on today’s announcement, which follows a decade of advocacy and six expeditions by the international marine conservation organisation to expand Cabrera.
“Today will be a great day for the Mediterranean and for international ocean conservation. Cabrera National Park is home to a huge diversity of ecosystems and marine life, and is a perfect example of the underwater natural heritage that we want to keep for generations to come,” said Ricardo Aguilar, Research and Expeditions Director at Oceana in Europe. “We salute Spain on this huge step forward in protecting its waters and marine life, and we hope other countries will follow Spain by creating more national parks at sea throughout the world,” added Aguilar.
Situated in the south of Mallorca, the Maritime-Terrestrial National Park of the Cabrera Archipelago was created in 1991 and is the only one that Spain has in the Mediterranean Sea. After today’s announcement, the amount of marine area protected within Spain’s National Parks jumps from 4% to 23%.
“This is this first time that Spain has given the maximum legal protection to deep-sea corals and to areas home to marine mammals such as sperm whales and dolphins, to yellow tree corals, and to large fish like bluefin tuna, among others,” said Marta Carreras, marine scientist at Oceana. "The enlargement will also give top environmental safeguard to other species such as devil rays, and the Critically Endangered Balearic shearwater,” explained Carreras.
Over a decade in the making
Oceana has been working to expand the park since 2007, when the marine conservation organisation made its first of six expeditions to study the area’s deep-sea waters and marine life. In 2013, Oceana joined Cabrera’s board of trustees, and in 2017, achieved an unprecedented parliamentary consensus in Spain: almost all the political parties in Congress and all of those in the Senate supported the expansion of the park.
The decade-long environmental campaign has been made possible thanks to the financial support of the European Commission, Adessium Foundation, Robertson Foundation, Third Millenium Foundation, Govern Balear, Fundación Biodiversidad and Spain’s Ministry of Environment.
Oceana continues to campaign to increase the marine area of other Spanish National Parks, including the declaration of the first exclusively marine National Park in El Hierro (Canary Islands) and the expansion of the marine area of Doñana (Andalusia).
[i] The largest national park in the Mediterranean is that of Alonissos-Sporades (Greece), with an area of 160,000 hectares.
" words="28" link="https://oceana.org/press-releases/spain-create-second-largest-marine-national-park-mediterranean-south/"]Thursday, January 10, 2019
seriously compromises public interest and therefore, its provision must prevail over the interests of the companies that refuse its publicity”.
“Last time we had to wait for four years to obtain the data because of the legal remedies filed by these companies”, remembered Calisto. “This is information of interest to the public, which is why it should always be available to consumers. Organizations such as Oceana should not have to display huge efforts to gain access to it”, she added.
There is currently a bill in Congress that aims to make information on the use of antibiotics separately by company and salmon farm, public through Sernapesca. “This initiative arises from the refusal of companies such as Ventisqueros and Marine Harvest, who continue to prevent this information from being easily accessible to all”, said Calisto.
Negative record of both companies
According to Marine Harvest’s Sustainability Report, the company maintains operations in at least six countries, and in 2017, in Chile, it used 417 grams per ton of fish produced, ten times more than in Scotland, where it used 41 grams per ton; in Canada the company used 22 grams, while in Norway barely 1 gram. In Ireland and Faroe Islands no antibiotics were used in salmon production.
Ventisqueros is among the five salmon farming businesses with the highest consumption rate of antibiotics per ton produced, with almost 800 grams according to data of 2015 published by Sernapesca. The company was rated seventh among 27 salmon farms with the most tons of antibiotics used between 2012 and 2014 according to a rating produced by Oceana in December 2017 with information obtained judicially and provided by Sernapesca.
According to the World Health Organization, the excessive and inappropriate use of antibiotics in animal production as well as in humans is contributing to bacterial resistance, a serious public health problem. The international organization established that, if immediate measures aren’t taken, antibiotic resistance will be the first cause of death by 2050, while medical procedures such as organ transplants, C-sections, chemotherapies and the treatment for diabetes will become very high-risk.
Salmon produced by both companies is mostly exported to countries such as Brazil and the United States, however, the first people to be potentially affected by bacterial resistance would be employees at the fish farms and residents in areas close to the farms, located mainly in regions Los Lagos and Aysén.
" words="28" link="https://oceana.org/press-releases/two-salmon-farming-companies-refuse-provide-information-their-use/"]Thursday, January 10, 2019
Oceana’s new campaign warns about salmon farming’s potential risks to human health
Using an animated video, marine conservation organization Oceana warned about the effects that bacterial resistance could have on health. This natural phenomenon has increased due to the excess... Read More
Thursday, January 3, 2019
Marine conservation organization Oceana celebrated the Chilean Senate’s approval of the bill that updates the National Fisheries and Aquaculture Service (Sernapesca) providing, among other things, increased transparency in... Read More
Friday, December 7, 2018
Oceana celebrates new leadership and new headquarters
On Tuesday, Oceana’s international Board of Directors, Executive Committee, staff, and supporters joined together to celebrate Oceana’s new board leadership and new global headquarters in Washington, DC. Oceana... Read More
Friday, October 26, 2018
Peru’s Vessel Tracking Data Now Publicly Available Through Global Fishing Watch
As world leaders prepare to gather in Bali, Indonesia for the fifth-annual Our Ocean conference, Peru has taken bold action to make its national vessel tracking data publicly... Read More
Tuesday, October 23, 2018
Sustainable Fisheries Law comes into force in Rio Grande do Sul
State Law 15.223/2018 comes into force on October 21 in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. It establishes the State Policy for Sustainable Fisheries Development, which... Read More
