"There's nothing left here," sighs Javier Franch as he shakes the heavy rope of mussels he's just pulled to the surface in northeastern Spain. They are all dead.
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With the country hit by a long and brutal heatwave this summer, the water temperature in the Ebro Delta, the main mussels production area of the Spanish Mediterranean, is touching 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit).And any grower who hasn't removed their molluscs in time will have lost everything. But that's not the worst of it: most of next year's crop has also died in one of the most intense marine heatwaves in the Spanish Mediterranean.By the end of July, experts said the western Mediterranean was experiencing an "exceptional" marine heatwave, with persistently hotter-than-normal temperatures posing a threat to the entire marine ecosystem. "The high temperatures have cut short the season," says Franch, 46, who has spent almost three decades working for the firm founded by his father, which has seen production fall by a quarter this year. The relentless sun has heated up the mix of fresh and saltwater along Catalonia's delicate coastal wetlands where the River Ebro flows ...
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