The Almuñécar Town Hall has sent a request to the Junta de Andalucia for permission to sink small boats off its beaches. The type of boats are wooden ones and the chosen location is La Herradura Bay.

The logic behind the project is twofold: protect the marine flora and fauna through providing sheltered breeding areas and dissuade the use of drag nets in the area) and secondly, to provide a bit of sight seeing for divers.

According to the First Councillor for La Herradura, Juan Jose Ruiz Joya, the idea is to sink these wooden boats some 200 metres from the shore to create artificial reefs. He assures that the proposal will be through agreement and consent with the various diving clubs.

The reason for using wooden boats is because that they rot with time and leave a less negative effect on sealife than steel or fibreglass boats.

He concluded by mentioning that other locations in Spain, such as El Hierro Island and Las Islas Medas (Girona) make a quiet killing through diving-related tourism, not only through this leisure industry in itself, but also in the hostelry sector as well.

Editorial comment: Yes, everybody agrees that creating artificial reefs to provide safe breeding grounds for fish and hamper drag-net fishing, which destroys seabed vegetation, is an excellent idea… which is all the more surprising the reaction of the Central Government over the actions of the Gibraltar Government to use concrete blocks to create an artificial reef…

Then again, it has more to do with taking the limelight away from massive corruption in Central Government and the PP in general than about either contraband or concrete blocks, doesn’t it.

(News: Herradura, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)