Jean-Marie Dominici - France

Jean-Marie Dominici presents the Scandola Reserve, talks about its management problems and shows us its many land and underwater resources.

Scandola is a 35 year-old marine sanctuary where one can witness a full restoration of ecosystems and a strong biodiversity unseen outside of the reserves. The full biodiversity can only be seen in the area of total protection, 75 to 80 ha within the reserve. Such areas of full protection should be expanded to all the marine reserves in the Mediterranean. There is too much surface activity by tourism. It was totally unknown in the 70's, so no defence against it was incorporated in the bylaws of this marine reserve. Thanks to the scientific observations conducted here, we have measured in 2003, and every year since, the impact of global warming. At 30m depth temperatures of 27-28 °C were recorded, with the subsequent death of corals. Another positive impact of the reserve is the preservation of the ospreys. When the reserve was created it hosted 2 couples of ospreys in poor health, the only ones left in Corsica. Now we have 10 in Scandola, 33 in Corsica and we have started to export them to Tuscany.