Increased pollution monitoring allows real progress for ecosystems, provided that it is followed by concrete action. However, these transformations can take a long time to take shape. On the Etang de Thau, in Hérault, the installation of treatment plants took thirty years before allowing a return to satisfactory water quality.
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"In the 1970s, the population doubled in the Sète region," explains Valérie Derolez, researcher at the Environment and Resources laboratory at Ifremer in Sète. There has been an increase in releases of nitrate and phosphate to water. ” A pollution which nourished the phytoplankton, which multiplied, causing a disappearance of the seagrass beds at the bottom of the pond. An upheaval which led to the multiplication of episodes of "malaïgues " , a kind of asphyxiation of the pond. "Concretely, it's as if the whole ecosystem is having a liver attack," explains the scientist. Episodes all the more dramatic as the pond
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