For many it represents a delicacy marine, but few know that the purple sea curl (Paracentrotus lividus) is actually the kind of echinoid More exploited in the Mediterranean Sea, with a significant increase in the total catches recorded in the last 2 decades.
To launch the alarm of an extinction risk is an international study published in Nature coordinated by Professor Stefano Piraino, director of the Desteba, and developed within the National Biodiversity Future Center (NBFC), involving the universities of Salento, Palermo, Malta and Arpa Puglia.
A work that presents the results of two demographic monitoring campaigns, conducted on populations of P. Lividus in the summer of 2023, at low depths in the coastal areas of Sicily And Puglia; and a meta-analysis of the density of P. Lividus in the Mediterranean Sea in the last 30 years.
In both sampled areas, the registered individual density was lower than ever, with an average value of 0.2 ind/m2, Without significant differences in the density of P. Lividus between protected and unprotected areas.
The study
The monitoring campaigns conducted in the summer of 2023 along the coasts of Sicily and Puglia have detected average density lower than 0.2 individuals per square meter, a value never recorded before.
A meta-analysis of data collected in the last 30 years has shown that the decline of the populations of the sea urchin Viola began in 2003, in conjunction with a wave of pan-European heat and an anomalous heating of the Mediterranean Sea. This suggests a synergy between anthropic pressures and climate change in determining the fate of the species.
The situation is critical – says the researcher Andrea Toso, the first author of the article – because the sea urchin is a fundamental component of coastal ecosystems and his decline not only threatens an important economic resource, but also indicates a profound ecological imbalance.
They are all data that once again indicate the need for continuous monitoring and more sustainable fishing management policies, the urgent to the urgency of concrete actions for the management and conservation of this species.
