Juan Ramón Morelló, president of the producers of El Fangar Bay, in the Ebro Delta, stretches the rope of no more than four meters from a raft, now bare, only with empty shells: “Do you see?
There is almost nothing left.
It's all dead."
Under normal conditions, it would have been filled with the small native mussel hatchlings for the coming season.
The extreme heat this summer has raised the temperature of the sea to 31 degrees and has unleashed a lethal impact on the rafts: farmers in the Delta have lost some 150,000 mussels this year - out of the 3 to 3.5 million they produce al year—and, what is worse, a million seeds or offspring of the next season.
This is what Morelló shows.
There will be no choice but to import from Italy or Greece.
To the regression of the Ebro Delta, denounced for years by the sector, environmentalists and the citizen defense movement, has now been added the scourge of this ruthless heat wave that has raised the temperature of the sea to unprecedented and sustained limits in the time.
This summer it has already exceeded 31 degrees when 28 marks the border of the risk of mollusk mortality.
“The problem is that it hasn't been just a few days: it's that we've been like this for a month and a half.
That's the strange thing”, confirms Gerard Bonet, manager of the Federation of Mollusc Producers, affirming that other times they had suffered the heat not so continuously and therefore generating much less damage.
The economic impact has not been calculated because it will depend on the price per kilo of seed set by producers in neighboring countries.
Morelló drives the platform's motor and welcomes the wind that blows with some force, causing a slight swell in El Fangar.
It's almost news: they haven't seen it in a month and a half, and if it had blown, he says, it could have saved them a week of the season.
The air, he says, oxygenates the sea, which is what this mollusk needs, which is distinguished by being small and of excellent quality.
But it hasn't happened until today.
"I began to think what was going to happen at the end of June," he says, looking at the data from the Research and Technology Institute that informs him about the temperature, oxygen, salinity, and pH of the sea.
The heat forced them to remove the mussels from the rafts ahead of time against the clock and transfer them to the salt water treatment plants.
There are no magic solutions:
Dead mussel hatchlings, in the Ebro Delta. Massimiliano Minocri
The production of mussels in the Delta, which provides 400 direct and 800 indirect jobs, is divided into two bays: Els Alfacs, the largest, has 90 rafts and generates some 2.5 million mussels.
In this case, the collection, which begins in April, had already been sold on the market.
The one at El Fangar has 74 rafts and produces between 700,000 and 800,000 mussels.
They have lost in this case those 150,000, 20% of the total.
But surely the loss is greater.
Marc Castells, from the Marisc Mediterrani factory, had to throw away 20,000 kilos because he could no longer sell them.
“It is a product that is sold live and with an expiration date.
The campaign lasted us two months and it has remained in 20 days”, he says.
Today he imports them from Galicia, he says, showing the large containers, or from Italy.
Everyone agrees that climate change conditions and will condition the future of mussel production and that is why they have been asking the Department of Agriculture and Climate Action for some time to drain El Fangar Bay with fresh water and open a channel so that the water circulates and oxygenates.
The shellfish harvest, Morelló warns, has fallen by half.
“We have a treasure, but they don't seem to realize it,” he says.
Last September, some 500 people, summoned by the Moviment de Lluita pel Delta de l'Ebre, formed a human chain of one kilometer, touching their feet in the sand, from the end of the bay to El Goleró beach to ask the Administration to act because the bay is closed.
A worker from the Marisc Mediterrani company packs bags of imported mussels. Massimiliano Minocri
With climate change on top, the sector is considering boosting oyster production, now limited to half a million kilos, and claiming its quality against, for example, that from France.
"They resist heat better than mussels," says Bonet.
The point is that, unlike mussels, there is no habit in Catalonia of consuming oysters and this is a trend that the sector would like to change with the support of the Administration.
In addition to waiting for public aid, now the producers are stopped waiting to negotiate with the Italian or Greek suppliers and trusting that the high temperatures -last year it happened in Greece- do not kill their young to carry out the transfer -they do it in refrigerators- and start to sow in October.
The question remains as to how it will affect agrotourism:
yesterday only a cat was walking along a punt scaring away the seagulls.
But the sale of mussels, even if they are not from the Delta, does not stop.
“They have nothing to do with ours.
But we have a meal and people want them”, says a neighbor after buying a four kilo bag in Deltebre.
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