The salt pools
Shallow pans changing colour with salinity and light.
Carmen vich โ CC BY-SA 4.0 ยท Carmen vich โ CC BY-SA 4.0 ยท Carmen vich โ CC BY-SA 4.0 ยท Joselodos โ CC0
**Salt pans still working since Carthaginian times, and a white-sand beach at their edge โ with flamingos standing in the pools** โ in the island's south. โ **Salt was Ibiza's original wealth**: **extracted from these pans since the **Phoenician-Punic period**** โ โ **and its chief export for two thousand years**; **long before tourism**. โ **And the pans still work commercially today.** โ **The system is a nature reserve** and part of the island's UNESCO listing: **shallow pools, dunes, pine woods and Posidonia seagrass**. โ **Flamingos stop here** on migration โ **chiefly in autumn and spring**. โ **And Ses Salines beach** is white sand and clear water โ **among the island's best known**.
Shallow pans changing colour with salinity and light.
Migratory birds stopping in the pools seasonally.
White sand and clear water at the reserve's edge.
Ses Salines, Sant Josep de sa Talaia, 07817 Illes Balears, Spain
**A protected marine plant, not a seaweed โ and its accumulation on the sand is what keeps the beach from disappearing.** โ **What it is**: ***Posidonia oceanica* is a marine flowering plant** โ โ **not an alga**: **it has roots, stems and leaves, and it flowers and fruits**; โ **and it forms vast underwater meadows around the Balearics**. โ **It grows extremely slowly** โ **a few centimetres a year**; โ **and the Ses Salines meadow between Ibiza and Formentera is estimated at more than **a hundred thousand years old**** โ โ **reckoned among the oldest known living organisms on earth**, **and part of the UNESCO listing**. โ **What it does**: **(1) produces oxygen in great quantity**; **(2) filters the water** โ โ **the clarity of Balearic water is directly due to this plant**; **(3) shelters and nurses many fish**; โ **(4) binds the seabed and breaks the force of waves**. โ **And its dead leaves pile on the beach in winter** โ โ **looking like unattractive brown heaps**; **but working as **a natural barrier** that stops storms scouring the sand away**. โ **Beaches mechanically cleaned of it every day lose their sand over time** โ โ **which is why it is deliberately left in the reserves**. โ **โ And do not anchor over the meadow** โ **an anchor tears out what took centuries to grow**; **and it is prohibited by law in the Balearics**.
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