Santander Bay
MOURO ISLAND
If we have to highlight an area of the bay for its high ecological value and biodiversity, this would be the island of Mouro that is located in front of the Magdalena Peninsula, at the mouth of the Bay of Santander.
Gerardo Diego poetically said of her that she finds herself “splitting the lines of the journey in two ” since two are the entrance and exit mouths of the Bay that it delimits. Indeed, it is one of the main natural habitats that the bay has, so it is not surprising that it was declared a natural reserve as early as 1986 to protect the great biodiversity of its environment.
The island is made up of limestone rock in strata with little plant life (the main one being the Marine Fennel, Crithmum maritimum ). Cloned by thousands of birds that take advantage of its crevices to nest. It is therefore a important habitat, which has also earned it the qualification of Special Protection Area (ZEPA, 2014) and its inclusion in the Network of Marine Protected Areas of Spain (RAMPE).
The anthropic pressure on this sheet of water is very high, motivated by busy beaches and piers, a dense traffic maritime commercial and some nautical leisure and sports activities that are as atomized as they are intense that move with little order and criteria. All this means that this should be a priority area in any action program that may be developed in the future.