The Mediterranean Sea: what WWF Italy is doing to protect it

The ABC

The Mediterranean Sea, with a surface area of 2,969,000 square kilometres, represents only 0.82% of the total surface area of the seas and oceans, but it is home to a variety of living organisms that make it one of the hotspots of biodiversity.

In the Strait of Sicily, a ridge located at a depth of 400 metres separates the islands of Sicily from the Tunisian coast and divides the Mediterranean into two main basins, the western one covering approximately 0.85 million square kilometres and the eastern one covering approximately 1.65 million square kilometres.

The latest estimates of marine biodiversity in the Mediterranean indicate the presence of approximately 17,000 species. Depending on the taxonomic groups, the biodiversity of the Mediterranean represents between 4 and 25% of global marine species diversity. The Mediterranean contains around 7.5% of the world's species in an area equal to 0.82%. It can therefore be concluded that the wealth of species per area is approximately 10 times higher than the global average.

What WWF Italy does

Protecting the Mediterranean is a key focus for WWF's work in Italy. In 1978, we launched a major campaign to raise public awareness of the importance of Mare Nostrum and its rich marine life, called Il mare deve vivere (“The sea must live”). Today, our efforts continue, and we are calling on everyone to take action through the initiative Senza il mare non si vive (“Without the sea, we cannot live”).

Through the EU-funded MERCES (Marine Ecosystem Restoration in Changing European Seas) project, we aim to gain a better understanding of the intense pressures caused by human activities by investigating the consequences of the interaction between humans, the environment and marine species and proposing actions to restore the marine environment.

The concept of “restoration/recovery” involves both removing humans impacts and restoring the structural and functional balance of the ecosystem.

We carry out a wide range of activities and projects to protect the Mediterranean, from sustainable fishing and coastal protection to sea turtles’ conservation and addressing the problem of plastic in the sea.

The challenge of conserving the Mediterranean is a global one, and we are tackling it by coordinating with other WWF offices, such as those in Spain, Greece, and France, as well as with a specially created WWF International office that also engages countries along the southern coast and the Balkans.

This is a major commitment that unites us in protecting our shared sea.