The “ecological damage” caused by the illegal anchoring of a yacht which destroyed Posidonia meadows on the Côte d’Azur exceeds 200,000 euros, two environmental defense associations argued on Friday at the Marseille maritime court.
If the judges, who will deliver their deliberations on February 23, follow these requests by ordering financial reparations, it would be the first time that ecological damage has been recognized for the Posidonia herbarium.
In order to protect this endemic flowering plant of the Mediterranean which serves as a carbon sink, nursery for fish and protection against coastal erosion, France has banned since 2020 the anchoring of yachts over 24 meters in certain areas of the Coast. The French Riviera and Corsica, major places of world yachting.
Yacht anchors, particularly when they are raised, but also the movement of their chains when anchored, can cause real scars over several hundred meters to Posidonia meadows, a species protected since 1988.
At the end of October in Marseille, the Hungarian captain of a yacht was fined 20,000 euros as well as banned from sailing for a year in French territorial waters for having anchored his 26-meter vessel three times. in prohibited areas, in Cannes in 2021 and in Saint-Tropez in 2022.
The maritime court, considering that these anchorages had caused harm “significant to ecosystems” had requested, at the request of the associations France Nature Environnement (FNE) Paca and the League for the Protection of Birds (LPO) Paca, civil parties, that an estimate of the “ecological damage” thus caused be established, requesting for this provide assistance to the specialized environmental center of the Marseille court.
Based on the latter’s note, the associations retained two possible calculation methods for this new damage: one consists of an estimate of the value of the ecosystem services provided by the Posidonia herbarium, the other is based on on the estimated costs of restoring this herbarium. In the first case, the damage was estimated at 213,223 euros by the associations, in the second at 246,875 euros.
“If I summarize: it is very expensive for man and the environment to destroy Posidonia“, who has “very low resilience capacity“, the species, which currently occupies some 80,000 hectares in the French Mediterranean, regenerating very slowly, FNE Paca lawyer Isabelle Vergnoux told the hearing.
“The aim of ecological damage is reparation in kind“, whether active or passive, she recalled. The associations want the sum that will be retained to be allocated to the Water Agency, which finances Posidonia restoration programs, but also to communities responsible for monitoring areas affected by the destruction.
Today, “we are able to put back herbarium in a bleed which was created by anchors“, explains to AFP François Boissery, sea expert at the Water Agency, specifying that this “avoids having an erosion zone” which could then spread.
For the Mediterranean maritime prefecture, the regulations governing anchorages are bearing fruit: in 2023, the number of suspected offenses in this area has significantly increased (933 compared to 650 in 2022), according to its spokesperson Pierre-Louis Josselin. “an improvement in the surveillance network and better awareness” of the public.