Updated on November 3, 2017
Training course Save Our Seas in Craotia with Argonauta association
After a great and busy summer at Project MARE, September began with the motivating opportunity of doing a nine-day training course called Save Our Seas (S.O.S.). Check the video!!
Save Our Seas!! Really?? Can you imagine a most interesting topic for MARE people?
The Italian team, composed Simona, Francesca and myself (Nuria) went to Croatia plenty of enthusiasm and with the idea of learning new things about marine conservancy and of meeting other sea lovers willing to do their bit to protect our seas.
The experience was up to our expectations, the first day we met the 25 participants, a group of really nice people, who were mainly from the Mediterranean countries (Spain, Greece, Croatia, Turkey), and some of them from the Atlantic (Portugal) and Baltic (Latvia) coasts.
After some ice breaking and presentation games the international sea-environment training course started. The next days were full of experiences, shared moments, activities, games, presentations, videos, laughter, worries, positive energy, frustrating issues…. because Save Our Seas isn´t an easy task!!
It’s worth highlighting some of the more enriching activities, at least to me:
- We all have an ecological behaviour and try to do our best in our daily habits… Or do we? Are we really aware of the environmental consequences of the most common activities in our life? Let´s go to deep in it! Calculate the carbon footprint created by a plane trip, or the imprint of food, clothes or phones that we usually use… This might make us reconsider our habits. Together we can think many options and alternatives to better perform!
- After each of us presented the worst marine problem suffered where we came from, we could see how wide are the issues but also that priority actions change depending on the place.
- It is difficult to have a global vision of a big, but there are different mental models, that can constitute really interesting tools. Thus we can face huge world problems like marine pollution, global warming or overfishing in different ways. If we get to understand why we arrive to this point is easier to find solutions or alternatives.
- What happens if we make some research to know how many straws, plastic glasses or bags are used per day just in a country? The resulting number is quite embarrassing. We may think that using plastic bags is not so bad as long as we recycle them… Well, after checking the plastic waste we produce it´s easy to realize that recycling is not enough! Consuming less is the key!
- The best way to understand marine issues is going into the water. Snorkelling to compare biodiversity, sizes and quantity of marine life between a protected place and a non-protected one is a great way to start.
- How to spread information and to do environmental education in an interesting way is a really important and hard task. Organize a workshop about a marine topic and present it to your colleagues, the experience can be from stressful to fun, but overall it is really useful for our future.
After that intensive training we came back to Italy with loads of ideas, tools and new friends! Thank you all, participants and trainers, for this great experience!
Posted on October 26, 2017
‘A Sea to Expore’ in the Schools of the Sorrento Peninsula
It’s that time of year in project MARE where things are starting to slow down a bit: less Ieranto Bay monitoring, hardly any people on the beaches, and just a bit more wind and rain. That doesn’t mean we have less to do however, since one of the main aspects of project MARE is that of environmental education.
So, what will we be doing over the next month and days left? We have the privilege to teach the primary kids in the schools around here and, specifically, this year’s batch are in Sant’Agata, Monticchio, Torca, and Pastena.
The first sessions were held Tuesday through to Wednesday, with the purpose to introduce ourselves and talk about some aspects of the marine park. We had prepared a great activity where the kids had to show how well they know the area by marking the different protected zones within the park with yarn on a map. Naturally, everyone crowded in to help each other and all in all, a good result!
Let’s see how well they know their seas when we talk about our chosen topic over the next weeks: fishing! Let’s see if they get hooked…
Updated on October 16, 2017
Enough with plastic
50 years ago, a lot of boats occupied Ieranto Bay. Since the park it’s created in 1997, we tried to maintain the bay conducive to the marine ecosystem and human aquatic activities such as swimming, snorkeling or kayaking.
Today Project MARE and the AMP went to Ieranto Bay, not for his beautiful beach, but about a problem that everyone should be aware of and impact all our planet : the plastic pollution. This pollution is harmful both to land and water. The plastic use in abundance, is commonly thrown with impunity. Its catastrophic effects affect wildlife, habitat and concomitant humans.
Carried by winds and tides, plastic waste and polystyrenes arrived at our splendid bay.
“Normal” plastics take 200 to 400 years to degrade and asphyxiate animals!
Oxo-biodegradable plastics fragment in a few months in thousands of small tips, consequently IMPOSSIBLE to COLLECT; 
intoxicated animals!
Let us remind you that the waste causes the death of animals (turtles and seabirds especially) by ingesting plastic objects that they confuse with food.
Throughout the summer of 2017, eco-citizens were assembling to remove the floating industrial waste from this natural area. Also active at the FAI, on land and at sea, we volunteer Project MARE; helped by good local and tourist eco-citizens, as well as the association Fondali Campania, helped to collect as much fraction as possible in swimming, with hands and / or nets. Every day, at least one bag of floating waste was brought back at the end of the day and dropped off at the beginning of the garbage trail.
This morning, we MARE’s volunteers – Felipe and Meli-Sheryam – went accompanied by the AMP’s boat with Luca and Nicola, and Mimi the innovator of Project MARE. We are mobilized for this defensive operation: marine and terrestrial conservation. We brought 6 large black plastic bags filled with floating waste, a beach umbrella and its support, two plastic ducts and another large.
On the way back, we recovered two floating polystyrene tanks (yes, again), as well as a heavy boat seat on a rock!
Wow, it’s heavy !!!
We saw the someone fishing in the zone B … we do not think this is written in the rules of the Marine Park! What do you think?
Now arrived at port, we unload the boat from the garbage bags to load the garbage truck.
Although this morning was short, this gesture was a good step for our beautiful planet earth.
By sharing information, perhaps we will be more to be aware and sensitize by this wonderful treasure that nature offers us, Mother Earth.
MARE culture: Do you know the existence of the 7th continent? Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP) millions of tonnes of waste pollutes the oceans.
Updated on October 14, 2017
Ischia: an Island adventure in the Gulf of Napoli.
Over the course of a week, Project M.A.R.E. were present on the island of Ischia to help conduct some surveying work for the local marine protected area, Regno di Nettuno. This study was also coordinated with the university of Naples, who had constructed the survey itself: All six M.A.R.E. volunteers would travel around the Island, covering different locations and establishments, through the media of questionnaires.
Our task was to cover beach-goers, beach, boat-rental and diving centre establishments as well as professional and sportive fishermen’s opinions and feedback on their daily/yearly activities and expenditure, amongst other relevant facts.
Firstly, Olga and Meli were sent alone to the island with two friends to establish a foothold and to initiate the work itself.
Day 1: Arrival on the Island
Initially, on Monday, Olga and Meli moved in to the flat where we all would be staying, which had kindly been provided to the project for the duration of the stay on Ischia as a base of operations. It was a lovely spot, really close to the castle of Ischia, castle Aragonese. The rest of the day was spent exploring the islands many attractions and places (especially the cheap and delicious ice-cream parlours) and stocking up on pasta for the week…
Day 2: Working & first impressions:
The first task was to understand the Islands transport system: luckily, it is an island, and it’s very difficult to get lost… The work started with the delivery of questionaries to a few of the local diving centres on the Island, and Meli and Olga later staked out places where we could all work. Luckily, the work wasn’t too exhausting, it being the first day, so they had another nice evening walking around the town of Ischia. Also, they found even cheaper and even more delicious ice-cream!
Day 3: Forio, ducks, and more work.
Wednesday started off with a trip to Forio, a town on the west coast of the island. Here, they encountered all the islands ducks and started working.
The afternoon was spent in Sant’Angelo in the south, a town with one of the islands longest beaches. There, they got to do some amazing snorkelling and a boat trip with some of the locals, being the first of us volunteers to get to see the underwater world of Ischia.
They also helped to locate some anchors which had been left on the sea bottom after an event: MARE volunteers will always seize an opportunity to help the local environment where they can.
After having used up a lot of calories with the days underwater activities, it was time for a proper first reward for hard work: the cakes of Ischia
. Gorgeous strawberry and lemon cakes and other marvels of the Italian “dolce”.
As you may have noticed, the running theme of the first half of the week was fun and food.
The evening was spent in one of Ischia’s famous thermal baths, with the dark having scared off a considerable amount of the German tourists who had swarmed the island early autumn.
Day 4: Arrival of all volunteers & rendevouz.
Thursday morning, the four-remaining stumbled off the ferry onto the island: Henrik, Felipe, Anis and Indra. The first thing we noticed, was how lovely the island looked, but also how many Germans there truly were present on the island… Without really stopping to rest, we divided ourselves into groups and scattered along the islands coastline. Anis and Henrik decided it would be a great idea to walk the whole northern section of the island, covering about 1/3 of the islands coastline. They got to see what must have been the cosiest beach on the island:
It was worth the blisters…
Indra and Felipe established a more static area of operations on the beach of Forio, where many seem to have gathered to enjoy the early October sun. The exotic beauty of Indra’s blond mane and Felipe’s dark mysterious southern debonair manners served them well, however it was only foreigners who found it exotic enough to agree to fill out the survey.
Olga and Meli continued to work up north and also found some lovely vantage points around the Island in the process, continuing the trend:
Then they had the notoriously difficult task to get the local fishermen to share information about their work and catch. Of course, this had to be near the bunches of nets that littered most of the smaller ports stonework.
With everyone being starving after a hard day’s work, but also unwilling to have to cook, we managed to find the cheapest pizza place in the vicinity and gorge ourselves full: an evening well spent!
Day 5: Olgas Departure & the discovery of Ischia’s wine.
In the morning, we all got together in the port of Ischia for some coffee to manage the next few days. Since Olga does not have a taste for fish, she obviously had the privilege to go to talk to the fishermen selling their catch at the local fish market.
The rest of us got the great idea to head to the municipality to fish out some information we needed about the beach-establishments around the island. Luckily, the staff were very kind and helpful, and provided us with more than could ask for.
So, having gotten a lot of work done, we stayed together this time and decided to cover all the towns and survey targets as a group all over the Island. To finish off, we had a lovely stroll along the beach near Sant’Angelo in the south, picking some local fruit to eat on the way as well.
We also tried a local thermal pool, however, it was totally full of green-mud-covered Germans…
When we finally had made our way back to the flat, we decided to try one of ischia’s most famous exports: the wine! Of course, this would be accompanied by homemade pasta with mozzarella and other Italian delicacies. We all managed to try quite a few of the wines…
Day 6: Meli’s Departure & Finishing off Ischia.
All volunteers made another round through the islands towns, making sure we had done a good job and collected all the remaining surveys left around the Island. It was a relatively calm day, with quite some walking, and a lot of wind. Surveying beaches with sand in your face is quite difficult… so we managed to get some actual sightseeing into the program in the end.
The decision was made that we hadn’t tried enough of Ischia’s wine, so the evening was spent indoors playing Tunisian card games and poker (without cash we are poor volunteers).
Day 7: Procida & Kayaking
After cleaning the flat together, the four-remaining headed for their designated locations for work. Indra and Henrik went together to Procida with Nuria (our mentor) and Francesco (our friend) to talk to people on boats in the ports and local fishermen. Procida being a small Island, it only took a few ours to cover in its entirety. They found out the views from the sea were as beautiful as those on the land as well:
Anis and Felipe Were sent to Sant’Angelo to do some kayaking-surveying. Luckily, the sea was relatively calm compared to the day before. Since Felipe and Anis later told us they spent half the time trying to empty the kayak of water, the day before would have had to include snorkelling gear as well…
After a long hot day of work it was then time to depart for our home port in Sorrento. With the amount of walking and talking we had done, naturally everyone slept on the trip back… it was ferry nice.
Posted on October 2, 2017
The Olives in Ieranto Bay
For this last week of September 2017, the olives season arrived in Ieranto bay. On Monday, FAI (Fondo Ambiente Italiano) started their work and invited us Wednesday to harvest the mature olives* from the trees in their garden with them.
* from the yellow color – the purple color, to the shiny beautiful black olive
Arrived in Ieranto bay, we saw the workers and volunteers of FAI from different part of Italy (from Milan, Bologne, Genova…) already in action with the fruit of the olive trees. We were impressed by the work they doing.
It was the first time we see for real the traditional italian olives harvesting, therefore we were really excited to do it. We joined them, we sat down on the harvest nets and then started
.
First they cut branches for us so that we can have access to it.
Two used the electric rake to facilitate picking. I tried it : you have to hold hardly and put the tool in the branches to make the olives fall ;)
After we took one branch and with our hands we removed the fruits of the olive tree on them. Gradually we could see the nets covered with greens and black olives.
Now midday, it was time to eat. “Il Salvatore” kindly prepared us during this time, pasta with… olive oil, garlic and parsley. It was good! We ate all together under his pleasant veranda with beautiful view of Ieranto (and the boats in the distance), drinking good wine.
Come on! Come the time to continue what we started: take the olives in hand.
We used different techniques : with hands (manuel) or a rake (tool). My favorite technique is once and for all with the hands. For me it’s more natural and I like to be directly in contact with the nature. Nature has the power to purify you, to re-energize yourself, to regenerate you! What better than being in the middle of the roots of the Mediterranean.
The manager of the gardens of the FAI, Umberto is even present! He told me about a flower that he appreciates very much: rose of bourbon imported by Bonaparte, on Reunion island.
All the olives recovered, we gather the net to bring the olives together and put them in a bag of burlap.
The last step for us is to carry the olive-filled bags to the platform, where a boat has come specially to collect them in order to transport them to the mill to produce them in olive oil or other.
A request comes to me : for the harvest, why wait until the olive is ripe?
A ripe olive will give a softer, more abundant oil that will keep for a shorter time. A green olive will give a more fruity and more typical oil, which will keep better but will be less abundant.
* Do you know that ? The olive tree has been cultivated for at least 3,500 years before our era, and that we can use its leaves to disinfect skin wounds and can bring down blood pressure slightly !
Thank you for this great and funny day FAI and volunteers !
BONUS – My last day in Ieranto
