Protection and restoration of Pinna nobilis populations as a response to the catastrophic pandemic started in 2016

The main objective of the project is to put into practice mitigation measures that prevent the total extinction of Pinna nobilis at the short-medium term. The disease affecting the fan mussel is expected to devastate nearly all the remaining populations, leaving only a few scattered potentially resistent individuals and a few populations of non-resistant individuals in refugia (i.e. coastal lagoons, deltas, etc.). There is no current treatment for the disease, and even if it was, its application would be likely constricted to captive individuals, due to practical difficulties in the open sea. Yet, if no actions are taken, the resistant individuals will perish in time without leaving any offspring, whereas the populations in refugia will decay, being unable to repopulate if any other factor kills them. The present project proposes urgent measures within the framework of a collaborative consortium of experts in the field that enables the application of international measures.

Thus, the project will focus on 3 objectives:
1) Increasing awareness to a global scale, reducing the possibility of vandalism and illegal collection of the remaining fan mussels. It will be oriented to schools and the general public, seeking a broad collaboration. It includes producing a professional video describing the project objectives and results, as well as international workshops and volunteer actions.
2) Gathering information of the remaining populations and resistant individuals and inclusion in an integrated database on the LIFE Pinnarca webpage. This will not only help planning more effective recovery actions, but also will help other countries applying mitigation and recovery actions. This will be achieved by implementing exhaustive census of areas where resistant individuals or unaffected populations could be found as well as installing larvae collectors for successful recruitment.
3) Developing recovery actions focused on both the resistant and the remaining non-resistant populations, in order to increase the probabilities of recovery of the species. It involves efforts to aggregate resistant individuals, translocation of vulnerable individuals in paralic environments to safer areas, exchange of genetic information among remaining populations, location of new optimum sites to repopulate with healthy fan mussels, maintenance of individuals in indoor facilities and development of active measures to improve the environments where healthy non-resistant individuals are still found.