Prince of Posidonia

We halted for the night in a campground in Fertilia. Right opposite is the beach, so we headed over as soon as we could.

The beach is no beach, but just a bed of Posidonia oceanica detritus. Mounds of it lay everywhere, sometimes meters tall and spongey underfoot. This is the classic seagrass of the Med, and we were in a hotspot apparently.

The whole beach was also littered with these "kiwi du mer". I was puzzled as to what they were, but Kiran explained that these are fibers of the broken-down grass, which then gets "woven" into these balls by the waves. Seemed like an imaginative idea, but I looked it up and he was actually right!

"Bah oui papa, Posidonia are the lungs of the Mediterranean"

He had gotten all that from his school trip. And I was the one who had dived and written a paper about them.

Nature can sure make weird things.Read more