A new rule in Marbella is causing a stir: anyone who urinates in the sea will have to dig deep into their pockets. The city has fined up to 750 euros. Repeat offenders will be fined even more.
Marbella – Popular travel destinations are trying to defend themselves against the negative effects of tourism with some strange rules. In Sardinia, for example, you risk a fine if you don’t wash your feet after a visit to the beach, and in Posillipo you have to reserve your place on the beach online in advance. The Spanish coastal town of Marbella is now also making headlines with a new regulation: urinating in the sea will now cost 750 euros. How exactly such an infringement will be proven remains unclear.
Penalties for urinating in the sea: What now applies on the beaches of Marbella
In July, the Marbella City Council decided to punish urinating in the sea and on the beach with a fine of up to 750 euros. This regulation will come into force in September, as the local newspaper Marbella24hours reported. Repeat offenders could even face a fine of 1,500 euros. Anyone caught for the third time must pay up to 3,000 euros. In the province of Málaga – which also includes Marbella – a similar regulation has been in place since 2004, but with a fine of 300 euros it is much more lenient. The city of Vigo in northern Spain also has a similar beach rule, as Spanish media reported.
The Marbella City Council has not yet announced how exactly the regulation will be monitored and how a violation will be proven. The Spanish daily World published a cartoon with an ironic “suggestion” about it. The drawing shows a beach on which there is another tower next to the lifeguard watchtower. This is labeled “Control of physiological evacuations” – this is what the new Marbella regulation calls urinating into the sea. A request from fr.de from IPPEN.MEDIA A request to the Marbella Tourist Office regarding the background to the fine and its enforcement initially remained unanswered.
Corals at risk: How human remains disrupt the ecological balance
From a scientific point of view, it actually makes sense not to urinate in the sea in some places. For example, near coral reefs. These ecologically sensitive sea creatures can be damaged by urine, also because urea often contains medication or antibiotics. In quiet bays with warm water, where there is hardly any exchange of water masses, the concentration of urine can be higher and thus have greater effects, such as Ecotest reported. The nitrogen in urine turns into ammonium in the water, which provides nutrients for marine plants and algae. The algae that are stimulated to grow can therefore deprive the corals of light and thus damage them.
A well-known example of this is Maya Bay in Thailand, which became famous through the film “The Beach”. The bay has been closed since August so that the corals can recover from the masses of tourists. Elsewhere, however, “peeing in the sea” is hardly a problem, my scientists. Urine is basically made up of around 95 percent water, but also contains sodium, chloride and potassium. These substances are found in seawater anyway. According to experts from the American Chemical Society (ACS), the Atlantic alone contains 350 trillion liters of water. Even if all the people in the world were to urinate into the sea at the same time, the amount of urea would still be negligible, according to experts. The sea has to cope with completely different calibers anyway: According to Ecotest About 1,000 liters of urine are released into the world’s oceans every day.
#Euro #fine #urinating #sea
