Poetry and Science Can Redeem the Sea

Early September, 1959. A soft glow spreads over the “thick old wine of salts and iodine,” as Carmen Conde describes the Mar Menor in a poem. Those verses do not yet exist, she will write them in the next few days in Lo Pagán, next to the shores of the Mar Menor, immersed in its calm waters. The poems that she creates during that time will end up being published in a book that will be called The Poems of the Mar Menor. As I said, though, those verses have not yet seen the light of day because Carmen Conde has just arrived and only opened her suitcase, hanging her clothes in the closets. She is staying with her friend Eulalia Ruiz in a little house surrounded by pine trees. Four days later, in a letter she sends to her dear Amanda Junquera, she says how in the Mar Menor there is an ancient, still peace that is often enchanting. She adds: “I have counted the pulse of the sea, thirty-four beats per minute, with a smell that reminds me of lives that exist only within my blood.”

Six decades later, if Carmen Conde were to extend her fingers to feel the pulse of the Mar Menor, she would find it very weak. It would no longer be a calm but rather a sick pulse. When I went to the Mar Menor two years ago, in 2023, to research a book I was writing, Laberinto mar, I could see how the palpitation of its waters was that of a body in pain. In the very touristy month of August, I found that on the beaches of the towns in the inner part of the lagoon, almost no one was bathing. Although they had mostly been removed early in the morning, there was still algae rotting on the beach and fried-egg jellyfish that children collected with their plastic shovels and threw into buckets.

Isabel Rubio was waiting for me in the Mar Menor, a spokesperson for Pact for the Mar Menor, one of the first organizations to warn of the serious problems faced by the lagoon, and whose name comes from Carmen Conde’s poem entitled Pacto. In it, the poet writes: “I would like to be eternal, just to see you.” I don’t know if she would feel the same today. Passionate about underwater photography for years, Isabel Rubio has been observing how life in the Mar Menor is deteriorating due to nutrients that reach the lagoon. These nutrients come from the agricultural crops that surround the lagoon, which along with other types of pollution produce eutrophication, an excess of nutrients in the water. “Eutrophication was a word we didn’t even know how to pronounce,” Isabel told me. These nutrients cause the proliferation of phytoplankton, a green soup that results in hypoxia, the absence of oxygen in the water, which has caused mass deaths of fish on the shores of the Mar Menor. It is a nightmare of open mouths and scaly bodies writhing in agony.

In 2022, following a popular legislative initiative that gathered more than half a million signatures, promoted by Teresa Vicente Giménez, professor of Philosophy of Law at the University of Murcia, the Mar Menor became the first European ecosystem with its own legal personality, which means that the Mar Menor is subject to rights as if it were a person. Improvements have been made, such as the disconnection of illegal irrigation and the reduction of the volume of nitrates and phosphates that reach the lagoon, but the problems of the Mar Menor continue.

Science and poetry can come together to redeem the sea. I have tried to convey this idea in the previous paragraphs. When I use the verb redeem, I am quoting a poem by Carmen Conde entitled Redeemed by the Sea. One of its verses goes: “If I did not hope for a miracle, I would cry.” We must always hope for a miracle or, at least, trust that some improvements will come over time. Many people will think that the ability of poetry being able to help mitigate the serious problems facing the seas and the oceans is a literary exaggeration. I would answer that sometimes beauty is opposed to money. It is because of beauty, that is, because of poetry, that protected areas have been created on many of our coasts, thus preventing the hyper-urbanization that has occurred in other places. It is because of poetry, that is, because of beauty, that the Mar de las ​​Calmas, in El Hierro, will become the first 100% Marine National Park in Spain (if everything goes as it should).

Trying to protect the sea and the coasts using only the argument of beauty is insufficient. This is where science comes to the rescue. Science does not always rhyme with beauty, but it always has an accurate rhyme. Once beauty and science are combined, the most difficult part begins, which is getting the political and legal worlds to become interested. There are poems that truly capture the sea, but I think that to know it in depth we must listen to scientists. In my case, to better understand the effects of climate change on the oceans, as well as problems such as acidification, I had to go to Telde, in the Canary Islands, where the Institute of Oceanography and Global Change is located, to meet with the ecologist Javier Arístegui. In order to find out why the Mar de las Calmas deserves special protection, I spoke with marine biologist Beatriz Ayala, from WWF. Joaquim Garrabou, from the Institut de Ciències del Mar, told me how coral reefs in the Mediterranean Sea are affected by increasingly frequent marine heat waves. The biologist Andrés Cózar, from the Marine Research Institute of the University of Cádiz, told me how plastics and microplastics are polluting the sea. I can only wish that their voices, and those of other scientists, were heard much more.

The sea, the sea, the sea. We submerge ourselves in it and forget its complexity, and we also forget the complexity of life. We must redeem it so that it can redeem us, as well. Carmen Conde celebrated this:

What a joy that those who suffer
from beauty, the sluggish of the earth, the clumsy
and the healthy, all come here!

Las Sirenas Reef on the protected coasts of Cabo de Gata (Almeria). Photo: Pablo J. Casal

La Restinga, on the shores of the Mar de las Calmas, is the most southern town in Spain on the island of El Hierro (Canary Islands). Photo: Pablo J. Casal

Paraíso beach, in the Mar Menor (Murcia), almost empty on a mid-August afternoon. Photo: Pablo J. Casal

Wooden platforms for bathing in Los Urrutias, in the Mar Menor (Murcia). Photo: Pablo J. Casal

(Cover image: Foundations of an unconstructed building in La Manga del Mar Menor (Murcia). Author: Pablo J. Casal).