Once in the fairway, it’s time to hold on. Here the fishing boat goes full throttle, bouncing over the waves. Fisherman Paulo Ribeiro dos Santos clearly enjoys it. He looks back one more time, to see if the Dutch journalists haven’t fallen overboard long ago, and then things go up a notch.
One of the biologists traveling along points to three spoonbills flying overhead, recognizable by their black back-stretched legs and white plumage. But really looking is not possible, if we do not want Paulo to have to perform a rescue maneuver.
The goal today is a sandbank, where the growth of the seagrass in this estuary is mapped. The 57-year-old fisherman knows how to find the plate effortlessly. His whole life revolves around the river Sado – a few tens of kilometers south of Lisbon – so he knows it like the back of his hand.
So for his wife Dina Pereira dos Santos, 51, who is a fish farmer herself, it felt like the most natural thing in the world to join an organization that protects the river’s ecosystem. “It was like rediscovering myself,” says Dos Santos of her start with the Ocean Alive organization as soon as we arrived.
Walking on the sandy mud flat, Dos Santos shows what it is all regarding today: the weedy seagrass is visible at the edges at low tide. They will walk around these fields with a GPS, so that the annual growth or shrinkage is mapped out – a process that they hope will soon be possible with a drone.
Cages and nets of fishermen
At the same time, you can also see where the problem lies: cages and nets of fishermen, placed here to collect oysters, for example. It is the combination of fishing boats tearing up the roots with their anchors and pollution of the river water. According to Dos Santos, dumping of waste has become much less in recent years.
Now the challenge lies in convincing fishermen to treat nature with care – a process in which the organization is gradually succeeding. “My husband and I have known the other fishermen for a long time. This makes it easy to get through to them. I show them how the seagrass grows, which helps them understand where to anchor their boat to avoid damaging it.”
Ocean Alive was founded by Raquel Gaspar. While researching a population of river dolphins in the Sado for her PhD, it became clear to her that these were mainly affected by declining fish stocks – a direct result of less seagrass. These plants provide a healthy ecosystem in which small fish thrive – they like to hang out in and around the seagrass. If the plants disappear, it also means problems higher up in the food chain. The larger fish then run out of food.
Financed by local companies, Ocean Alive works with the municipalities along the river, but mainly with fishermen. “I realized that they and dolphins weren’t really that different from each other,” says Gaspar. “Both depend on healthy fish stocks. I just had to make that clear to them.”
Part of the seagrass fields of the Sado is protected as a Natura2000 area. But that is not true everywhere in the estuary. Anchors are still being thrown across fields and digging in the mud for shellfish – damaging the roots.
At first, Gaspar contacted fishermen’s wives like Dina, whom she had seen at the river. She now has quite a few of these women in her team. “Call it intuition,” she laughs, “But I see it as a symbol of sustainability. We feed our children and raise them. So it was also logical for me to approach the fishermen’s wives.”
But, Gaspar wants to emphasize, in the end her organization works with both the fisherman and his wife. As a couple, they usually know the river like the back of their hand, they are economically dependent on it and they care regarding it. It is therefore her goal not only to convince the government to tighten up rules for nature conservation, but also to find an alternative for the fishermen: another way to dig for shellfish, other sources of income.
If you look at the estuary, you would recognize an area like the Wadden Sea. At low tide, whole stretches of mud have dried up, with extensive mud plains all around that you can easily sink deep into with your feet. The situation of eelgrass is also comparable: for several years now, parts of the Wadden Sea have been planted with new eelgrass for recovery, because in some places this has completely disappeared.
Strong river current
The situation is less dire here at the Sado River, says fisherman’s wife Dina. There are still large areas of natural sea grass that would grow if left alone – unfortunately not all fishermen are on board with the project yet. Seagrass replanting has not yet started here in the Sado. It is too difficult, the river current is strong, often washing away planted seed.
The 26-year-old researcher Angela Herrero Fernández, who works with the organization on a grant, says – while walking with difficulty through a piece of mud – that planting would be too expensive due to the circumstances. “With all the costs for the boats and the time you put into it. We prefer to focus first on raising awareness among people who depend on the river.”
Back in the boat, fisherman Paulo wants to take the group of women further upstream. There he saw a whole piece of sea grass, he says. So before we know it it’s going full throttle once more, bouncing over the surface of the water. Paulo greets a group of oyster fishermen who are busy along the bank, following which the throttle goes down a little further.
“See, this is exactly why you want to work with local people,” says Herrero Fernández as soon as we arrive at the seagrass. “We didn’t know there was a field here. Paulo knows that. But it is also always the case in nature conservation that you want to involve as many actors as possible. This way everyone will love the project.”
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Rijkswaterstaat is planting 700,000 seagrass seeds in the Wadden Sea
Seagrass beds are among the most productive ecosystems in the world, but have completely disappeared in the Netherlands.
Seagrass protects those bounty beaches better than concrete
Seagrass has the power to protect Caribbean beaches from erosion. But an invasive, exotic eelgrass from the Red Sea is increasingly throwing a spanner in the works.
