Spain's unique Mar Menor, 10 years after infamous pollution episode: From the green soup' to a tiny Mediterranean'

Clear, calm waters over the Mar Menor contrast with the wetland’s collapse a decade earlier. A biological breakdown known as green soup devastated the iconic wetland in Murcia, Spain. Scientists monitoring the area report that recovery remains unstable. On May 27, 2016, ANSE and WWF released a press release with video showing a diver moving through green, vomit-like floating material. The event became global news as it reflected long-term pollution from mining waste, sewage discharges, and unregulated development, later intensified by agricultural nitrates. Nitrogen fertilizers leached into the wetland from the early 1980s through rain and the Quaternary aquifer, estimated to store up to 300,000 tons of nitrates. The wetland absorbed pollution until a eutrophication crisis erupted before summer 2016, triggering further episodes.

"To this day, although remarkably recovered, the natural space remains in an unstable balance, according to scientists who monitor its vital signs daily. On the morning of May 27, 2016, ANSE (Association of Naturalists of the Southeast) and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) issued a press release with a video that set off all kinds of alarms: floating in what looked like a kind of greenish vomit, a diver moved slowly like an astronaut exploring a distant atmosphere."

"This episode, dubbed the green soup, made global news as it illustrated the pollution of a wetland that had for decades been damaged by mining waste, sewage discharges and untrammeled development, and was finished off by nitrates from the powerful agricultural industry in the region. Pesticides, brine from desalinating water from wells (themselves illegal in most cases), and most particularly nitrogen fertilizers leached into the wetland from the early 1980s, both on the surface, carried by rain, and through the Quaternary aquifer, a large underground water pocket estimated by the regional government to have stored up to 300,000 tons of nitrates."

"The Mar Menor quietly absorbed all this enormous pollution while it could until, shortly before the summer of 2016, a eutrophication crisis erupted due to the excess nutrients, and in subsequent years this triggered episode"

"Removal of macroalgae on Los Urrutias beach by regional authority brigades last week.Alfonso Duran This episode, dubbed the green soup, made global news as it illustrated the pollution of a wetland that had for decades been damaged by mining waste, sewage discharges and untrammeled development, and was finished off by nitrates from the powerful agricultural industry in the region."

Read at english.elpais.com