In the second half of the 1950s, Belgian treasure hunter and archaeologist Robert Sténuit dived into the waters of the Ría de Vigo in search of an ancient galleon containing treasures that sank during the Battle of Rande. War of the Spanish Succession – Fought in the autumn of 1702 in the bay of San Simón in southern Galicia. He couldn’t find gold. There is not even money. No jewelry. But Sténuit found something better: a rich biodiversity that allowed him and his colleagues to see giant lobsters and lobsters every day around the Cíes Islands.

Sixty years later, the notes Sténuit left sound like science fiction. There’s a simple reason for this: Lobsters have almost disappeared from these waters.

Rías Baixas, an orchard. History was saved with a short documentary by experienced and famous underwater documentary maker José Irisarri. In the article, which lasts six minutes and was published on YouTube a few days ago, the expert recalls that when the Belgian immersed himself in the Rías Baixas (more specifically, the area around the Cíes Islands), he found a rich biodiversity left behind. He recorded it both in his notes and in his photographs. His goal was to search for a sunken galleon centuries ago, but the fauna and flora fascinated him enough to buy paper and ink to write down his impressions as a diver.

From “enthusiasm” to disappearance. “They found neither gold nor silver, but they found tremendous biodiversity under the sea,” the documentary states. Among this fauna and flora there was one species that was particularly interesting in terms of its value in the market: Palinurus elephasor the lobster mentioned by Sténuit in his writings. Today the situation is quite different. “I was born in the year that Robert and his friends searched for the sunken galleon and I have been trying my whole life to take pictures of lobsters in the Cíes Islands,” says Irisarri. “I have dived the same reefs many times.” “They looked into it, but I never saw it.”

The legacy of overfishing. The documentary tells how, not so long ago, dozens of boats sailed along the Galician coast, from Ribadeo in the far north-east of Galicia, almost to A Guarda in Raia, to catch lobsters. The crustaceans were then kept alive in marine mammals until they were shipped to other parts of Spain and even Europe. Evidence of the intense activity it generated was that some of these nurseries were very large, like the one at Rinlo, which contained about 20,000 kilos of crustaceans, as the documentary filmmaker recalled. It was this enormous commercial interest that brought about the demise of lobsters in the region.

“It was completely extinct, a victim of overfishing. In the 1970s, catches were reduced to a minimum and the fishery collapsed. Abandoned installations, such as the round cetaceans of A Guarda, or the ‘lobster house’, are found all along the Galician coast. Silent witnesses to an extinct species in Cíes, in the documentary It is stated that the presentation of Illas Atlánticas National Park reminds that the Lake in Cíes was used as a lobster breeding ground.

Figures for reflection. The documentary filmmaker offers some numbers to help understand species decline. It is known that in 1775 the Catalans had more than a thousand pots in the Ría de Vigo, probably dedicated to lobster, and at the end of the 19th century an intensive shell fishery emerged in the north of Spain.

“Almost all of the pots in Galicia and the Cantabrian Sea at that time were for lobster. The estimated number of pots used to catch lobster in the Cantabrian Sea was 10,870 from four different species,” says the study, ‘Fishing with pots in Galicia’. : a historical vision’. Its authors cite annual catches of tens of tons and an activity that employs approximately 2,000 fishermen.

mass landings. Lobster landings were still “significant” into the mid-20th century, says Irisarri, who cited about 4,000 kilos per boat over the three-month campaign. Another insight into the amount of lobster found in Galician waters comes from A Guarda’s Francisco Pérez, former president of the Santa Tecla fishing fraternity, who remembers that in the late 60s local fishermen were still catching large amounts of lobster every month. .

voice of galicia He’s talking about fish markets where 2,000 to 5,000 kilos of cargo are unloaded weekly. Just a few years later, in the mid-70s, the presence of these crustaceans in the waters off the coast of Galicia and Portugal decreased so much that A Guarda’s boats had to be moved to Morocco.

“Disappeared from Cíes in the 80s”. Although Cíes is today a protected area and part of the Atlantic Islands National Park, if Sténuit were to dive into its waters today he would likely encounter a very different view than the one he enjoyed in the 1950s. It’s not that easy to see copies Palinurus elephas. “The lobster disappeared from the Cíes Islands in the mid-80s,” laments Irisarri. This drift, and the fact that it is a “symbolic species,” should serve as a warning about the “enormous fragility of biodiversity” in the face of overfishing, according to Irisarri.

At the end of the day Palinurus elephas This isn’t the only species that lives during low hours. There are already studies warning about the situation of crayfish in Galicia. A year ago we told you about a report from IEO-CSIC that concluded that the population of the northwestern Iberian region had decreased by nearly 94% in just 26 years between 1983 and 2009. There are also worrying situations regarding lobster. signs like remember voice of galicia. In 2005, not even a 500 kg lobster was unloaded in A Guarda; This was a far cry from the volume of activity in the ’60s that veterans still remember.

Today, catches happen almost by chance, they told the Galicia newspaper. Registrations also fell at other fish markets in Rías Baixas.

How will you solve it? Irisarri’s documentary leaves out a suggestion suggested by Sténuit himself: creating a protected marine area where larvae from other areas can settle and reach adulthood. There are other successful precedents in favor of this idea, such as those obtained on the islands of Columbretes, Medas or Cabo de Palos: “These are good references that show us the direction we need to follow both to save the lobsters and to save the lobsters in Cíes.” prevent it from sharing the fate and perishing.

The Columbretes reserve was created in the early 90s, and just two decades later, in 2010, the lobster population was approximately 20 times greater than those recorded in waters outside the protected areas. Another promising sign is that although the armored area takes up a relatively small space, it provides the vast majority of larvae recorded in the environment, approximately 80%.

Pictures | Wikipedia (Fernando Losada Rodríguez)

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