The Posidonia Project is located in Italy, in the Marine Protected Area (MPA) of Bergeggi Island, in front of the Ligurian coast. The project has been designed and implemented with the scope of restoring Posidonia meadows by planting healthy saplings in degraded areas with specific interventions, helping them thrive once again. Posidonia oceanica, in fact, is a typical marine plant endemic to the Mediterranean sea and it’s an essential element for the whole marine ecosystem. Providing a vast variety of benefits, Posidonia meadows are an extremely important ecosystem able to: release oxygen into the water, regulate water temperature, sequester carbon, host high levels of biodiversity, maintain the seabed balance, and protect the coasts from erosion.
For example, did you know that the brownish stretches / groups of dead leaves you see on the beach are, most of the time, Posidonia leaves? They are called banquettes and you shouldn’t remove them! They are actually playing a role of paramount importance: protecting the coast from wave motion, ensuring the sand doesn’t flow into the water.
However, Posidonia is facing severe degradation rates, with a lot of negative consequences for the whole marine and coastal environment. It is heavily threatened by several causes, such as illegal fishing practices, irregular anchorage, coastal infrastructures development, water pollution and climate change.
To help them regenerate, interventions are needed, especially because Posidonia plants are very slow at growing - just a few centimeters each year. Projects like the one taking place in Bergeggi, thanks to the collaboration with OneOcean Foundation and Genoa University, are designed to intervene with precision on identified degraded Posidonia meadow plots. Healthy Posidonia samples are collected in plots not too far from the intervention plots and planted into the identified degraded area to help it thrive again.
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