Fundación Azul Marino brings “The Lung of the Mediterranean” to Torreblanca to raise awareness of Posidonia oceanica

• Fundación Azul Marino and Torreblanca Town Council are joining forces on a shared action within the “The Lung of the Mediterranean” campaign, which aims to raise awareness of the importance of Posidonia oceanica
• Mayor Tania Agut and Beaches Councillor Gema Edo took part in the presentation alongside Pablo García, project director of Fundación Azul Marino
• The action was completed with a public talk on Posidonia oceanica, given by Fundación Azul Marino biologist Jaime Penadés, and the installation of a large-format informative banner
• Torreblanca has been working with the “Turtles in the Mediterranean” campaign for several years and, this coming school year, is also joining the educational project on lesser-spotted catshark eggs in its schools

Oropesa del Mar (Castellón). Fundación Azul Marino and Torreblanca Town Council have launched a joint initiative within the “The Lung of the Mediterranean” campaign, through which the foundation has been working with Fundación Oceanogràfic since 2025 to raise awareness of the importance of Posidonia oceanica along the coast of the province of Castellón.

The intervention combined the installation of a large-format banner on a façade provided by the town council, a public talk on this key marine plant and an official presentation attended by Mayor Tania Agut and Beaches Councillor Gema Edo, together with Pablo García, project director of Fundación Azul Marino, and other members of the foundation’s team.

“It is a pleasure to host this campaign about Posidonia in our municipality, to make residents and visitors aware of what it is for and what it means for the good quality of our beaches”, said Tania Agut. “We are very happy and proud to continue with this awareness campaign and to bring this information closer to the public”.

“The ‘The Lung of the Mediterranean’ campaign aims to protect a system that often goes unnoticed and that is key to the Mediterranean we want: Posidonia oceanica. This meadow is formed by an underwater plant that covers vast areas, provides shelter for much of the marine fauna along our coast and also protects it from sea erosion. We need to be able to highlight the value of this ecosystem, and for that we need the public to know it. We started this campaign with the coastal municipalities that have Posidonia in their waters, but the idea is to keep adding more and more towns”, explains Pablo García.

A poster born in the classrooms of Vinaròs

The banner, installed on the façade of Torreblanca Town Council, reproduces the poster of “The Lung of the Mediterranean”. The design is the work of a group of Advertising and Marketing students from IES Leopoldo Querol in Vinaròs, who developed the campaign’s communication proposal last year as part of their training.

For his part, Jaime Penadés, biologist at Fundación Azul Marino, gave a public talk on Posidonia oceanica at the Espai Natura in Torreblanca.

A municipality committed to the sea

Torreblanca Town Council has taken part for several years in the “Turtles in the Mediterranean” campaign, an initiative of Fundación Oceanogràfic in which Fundación Azul Marino also collaborates, and maintains a constant involvement in environmental matters. This relationship now extends to education: from the coming school year, the town’s schools will join the lesser-spotted catshark egg recovery project, an action that brings the eggs of this Mediterranean species into the classroom so that students learn to monitor temperature, salinity and water quality while following the development of the embryos until they hatch.

A further step in protecting Posidonia

This campaign continues the actions carried out last year, when Fundación Azul Marino joined the Projecte Posidònia mobile app (available on Android and iOS), contributing the mapping of 4,500 hectares of seabed between Oropesa and Benicàssim, including 15 square kilometres of Cymodocea nodosa and 9 of Posidonia oceanica. The app is free and allows users to check in real time the areas where posidonia and other marine plants are found. This way, those sailing or anchoring their boats can do so responsibly, without damaging these plants, which not only oxygenate the sea but also act as a refuge for thousands of species.

About Fundación Azul Marino

Fundación Azul Marino is an organisation dedicated to the conservation of marine species and to environmental education in the province of Castellón. In collaboration with Fundación Oceanogràfic, it manages the Marine Species Conservation Centre at Bellver Blue Tech Zone, where it cares for and monitors specimens of threatened marine fauna before returning them to the sea.