As you may have read, some of my classmates live in Orbetello, so we wanted to tell you something about this town and how the ecology is administred.
Orbetello is famous for its lagoon, which in 1977 was appointed as humid zone of international importance, and therefore became part of Italian Protected Areas by WWF.
The Orbetello lagoon is formed by two sheets of water separated by a strip of land, where Orbetello is located. The northern part is occupied by Monte Argentario (635m). Orbetello, Porto Santo Stefano and Porto Ercole create a large influx of tourists especially durring the summer. The lagoon is home to several rare bird species like the cormorant, the heron and valuable fish such as bass and bream eels. However, the lagoon is characterized by an exessive presence of seeweed, especially in the summer. Recently it has been put into operation a craft, that will help collect the seeweed, that has been working tirelessly since January. Ingrid and I went to these workers to ask for information on the excessive growth of seeweed. One of the fishermen said to us: ''We have just passed one of the worst situations in the past ten years due to dystrophic processes, the situation of the seeweed is severe. The weather contidions are the cause of everything, the lagoon water levels are above the average, and therefore promote the growth of seeweed out of all proportion with the sun and then generate hydrogen sulfide which is the cause of the terrible smell of sulfur. The town of Orbetello is pumping up the water, over 1000 cubic meters per day and have made available 4 boats to clean the seeweed in their own areas, but inexplicably in the areas where there is just pumping up there is more seeweed. With the winter rains it is hoped that this situation improves, we hope that it will reduce the salinity level.''