Within the 'Posidònia Project' carried out by the Oceanogràfic of the City of Arts and Sciences through its Foundation, the first educational action was presented this morning in collaboration with the City Council of Dénia and the Mediterranean Fund Solidarity Fund from Banca March, which was attended by the students of the CEIP Pou de la Muntanya of the municipality and institutional representatives of the town.
The managing director of the Oceanogràfic Foundation, Leocadia G. Bartual, the person in charge of the 'Projecte Posidònia', Francisco Torner, presented the mayor, Vicent Grimalt and the councilors Melani Ivars, for Education, José Doménech, for Beaches and María Teresa P Conejero, of the Environment and these, in turn, to the teachers and students of CEIP Pou de la Muntanya, as it is the first educational center to start this educational project focused on marine wealth and the importance of conserving Posidonia oceanica. , a seriously endangered plant.
The act, framed within the events to promote the defense and enhancement of the oceanic Posidonia meadows that inhabit the waters of the Marina Alta coastline, has served to initiate the educational activity 'Message in a bottle'. The dissemination campaign to create new behavior patterns among the little ones with the marine ecosystem will be developed in the schools of Dénia, Poble Nou de Benitatxell, Teulada-Moraira and Calpe.
The mayor, the Dianense councilors and those responsible for the Posidonia Project have started this thread of good practices by writing their proposals to preserve the marine environment on Posidonia cardboard ribbons that they have later inserted into the bottle.
In addition, the activity includes a logbook in which the schoolchildren will write down the awareness actions carried out, the reflections and the commitments of the little ones regarding the defense of the marine environment.
The delivery of a chest with this notebook, together with the bottle in which the ideas to conserve the ecosystem will be stored, took place this morning at Punta del Raset beach. The first school to receive it was Pou de la Muntanya. The Cervantes, Les Vessanes, Pare Pere de Jesús Pobre and Paidos schools, and the Historian Chabàs and Maria Ibars institutes have also joined the initiative.
The chest will travel through the educational centers of Dénia between January and May. Once the activity is finished, the bottle with all the commitments will be delivered to the Oceanográfico at the II Marine Biodiversity School Congress, which will close this stage of the project.
It is also planned to hold a drawing contest with posidonia as the central theme. The works selected in the "Posidonarte" contest will be exhibited in different parts of the city.
This morning's activity ended with the release of a recovered turtle at the ARCA del Mar center, which symbolizes the journey across the sea of the bottle that will keep the contributions of the children of the region.
The turtle was captured by a fishing boat last December. It is a young male, which the students of the Pou de la Muntanya have baptized as "Poseidon".
'Missatge in a bottle'
'Missatge in a bottle' aims to raise awareness about the current problem that affects the seabed, with the participation of students from Dénia schools, based on the imaginary journey of two large bottles, accompanied by a logbook, which It will go from center to center through the towns of Dénia, Teulada Moraira and Poble Nou de Benitatxell and will be filled in by schoolchildren with their challenges, hopes and environmental practices.
'Missatge in a bottle' is an imaginary journey that schoolchildren from the Marina Alta will take over the next few months in order to reflect on the main threats that affect marine biodiversity in the Mediterranean and, later, promote good practice to minimize these threats.
Each class guards the bottle for a certain period of time and acquires a collective commitment that constitutes an environmental challenge until the end of the course. The challenge is transformed into a ribbon of oceanic posidonia that travels inside this bottle through the different schools of the Marina Alta until it forms a meadow, a lung in the Mediterranean.
Posidonia project
The Fundació Oceanogràfic is committed to defending Posidonia, a natural element of our coasts that oxygenates the water and cleanses it, as well as protecting the coasts from sand drag. For this reason, the Dénia City Council, together with the thematic solidarity fund Mediterranean Fund of Banca March, collaborates in the development of these activities within the Posidonia Project.
The Oceanográfic has developed a cartographic study to locate the posidonia meadows on our coasts as the first part of the project. The study has been carried out with the help of side-scan sonar and videographic surveys, and covers three areas of the Marina Alta coastline with great plant wealth, but also with a great risk derived from human activity, totaling more than 7.000 hectares of underwater meadows: the area of Almadrava, the marine area of the Montgó natural park and the marine space of Ifach.
The visual result of the scientific interventions can be consulted in the free mobile application 'Posidonia Project'. After these technical-scientific actions, the second part of the project focuses on dissemination and educational actions with the student community of Dénia, Poble Nou de Benitatxell, Teulada-Moraira and Calpe at levels between infant education and high school.
Francisco Torner, head of the 'Projecte Posidònia', has explained how students can help save posidonia through “Missatge in a bottle”. “It is a challenge for the entire educational community to participate in the conservation of an essential plant for the health of the planet”, commented Torner.
For her part, Leocadia G. Bartual, managing director of the Oceanogràfic Foundation, explained the mission of the Foundation to carry out actions such as the 'Projecte Posidònia', which seeks to value the marine biodiversity of the area of the Marina Alta and its impact on society.
For Grimalt, "it is important to carry out these environmental actions with schoolchildren so that our sea does not lose its biodiversity" and he thanked the Oceanogràfic Foundation for its work to protect the oceans.
"The bottles thus begin their adventure through educational centers, concluding their journey next June with the celebration of the II School Congress on Biodiversity that will take place in the Red Sea Auditorium of the Oceanogràfic, located in the Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències de València, and in which all the schoolchildren from La Marina Alta who have actively participated in the development of projects related to the conservation of the marine environment within the 'Projecte Posidònia' will meet.
A phase included in the Posidonia meadows protection project
The educational activity 'Missatge in a bottle' is part of the interpretative phase of the 'Projecte Posidonia'. A project that began last summer with the first technical-scientific phase and which consists of the cartographic study of the marine spaces of the Marina Alta, all of them considered Places of Community Interest (SCI) within the Natura 2000 Network and areas with greater nautical and recreational activity of the Valencian Community.
The interpretative phase began in August with the presentation of the free mobile APP 'Projecte Posidonia', which includes mapping data to inform nautical users of the presence of Posidonia meadows and help them anchor responsibly, and continued with the training to the teachers of La Marina Alta in matters of marine biodiversity in which they were offered the didactic tools to work with the students of the schools from a creative and transversal perspective and thus create a forum for meeting experiences
