The project is budgeted at €500,000
The new anchorage at Culatra Island in the Algarve, with capacity for 57 pleasure boats of up to 18 metres, should be inaugurated by June.
“We can expect to have the work completed by the beginning of June,” said Jorge Gonçalves, from the Centre for Marine Sciences (CCMAR) at the University of the Algarve (UAlg), a partner in the project.
According to the researcher, the “tender submission phase is underway, after which a company will be chosen” to install the 57 mooring points for 46 boats up to 12 metres and 11 boats up to 18 metres.
The project, budgeted at €500,000, was developed in partnership with CCMAR and Portugal’s Environmental Fund. The management of the anchorage will then be handed over to the Association of Friends of Culatra, one of the five barrier islands of the Ria Formosa.
The protocol for financing the studies and implementation of the structure was signed last December at the headquarters of the Culatra Island Residents’ Association in the presence of the previous government’s secretary of state for nature conservation and forests.
The National Institute for Nature Conservation and Forests (ICNF) is mediating the installation of the anchorage as part of a wider project to organise recreational boating in the Ria Formosa, which includes the installation of six more identical structures.
Speaking to Lusa last December, the regional director for Nature Conservation and Forests in the Algarve, Joaquim Castelão Rodrigues, said that the aim was to organise the anchoring of recreational boating to preserve the lagoon area.
“As this is a very popular area during the summer for recreational boating, the anchoring of the boats has an impact on the habitats, particularly the marine grasslands,” he said.
According to the ICNF, the Culatra Island anchorage is one of the 44 georeferenced in 2009 in the Ria Formosa Natural Park Plan, whose management and assessment of the estuary’s carrying capacity is the responsibility of Docapesca, the Portuguese Environment Agency and the Administration of the Ports of Sines and the Algarve.
Castelão Rodrigues emphasised that the planning of recreational craft “is yet another of the measures implemented by the park’s management to preserve an area of great ecological, scientific and economic value, namely its flora and fauna, including migratory species and their habitats”.
According to the official, more than 200 boats were counted in a single day in the Culatra area, in the district of Faro, resulting in “a very heavy burden on the biodiversity of the lagoon system.”
The Ria Formosa is a large lagoon system that stretches from Ancão to Manta Rota – covering five Algarve municipalities: Loulé, Faro, Olhão, Tavira and Vila Real de Santo António.
The lagoon system includes a wide variety of habitats, including barrier islands, tidal bars, salt marshes, sand and mud banks, dunes, salt marshes, freshwater and brackish lagoons, watercourses, agricultural areas and woodlands.
Source: LUSA
