Nature continues to amaze us in Algarve with over 500 flamingoes (Phoenicopterus roseus) hatching recently in the marshlands of Castro Marim and Vila Real de Santo António.
In May, the Portuguese National Institute for Nature Conservation and Forests (ICNF) confirmed that the flamingo population, over recent years, has been increasing. This year the ICNF counted over 800 nests and currently ensuring the safety of the baby flamingoes in the 3,000 strong colony.
But Algarve has been a popular place for new arrivals. Zoomarine announced the birth of Neo, a third-generation bottle-nosed dolphin, on the last day of 2020 and Zoolagos welcomed many new additions including a pygmy hippopotamus.
Both Zoomarine and Zoo Lagos are active in conservations projects, environmental campaigns and breeding programmes for endangered species.
Portimão Museum – SEA project
The Temporary Exhibition Gallery in Portimão’s museum is hosting, as of this weekend, two exhibitions in line with the museum’s MAR (SEA) project: Listen to the Ocean (Ouvir o Oceano) and Can Design (Design com lata) — the latter playing on the Portuguese expression com lata meaning extreme self-confidence.
The first is an exhibition by BJ Boulter whose dolphin, made from discarded plastic, can be found on a Lagoa roundabout and which is intended to draw attention to the perils of plastic in our oceans.
The message to be taken from her Listen to the Ocean exhibition is one whereby humans need to stop the “careless way” we “are treating the earth and its inhabitants” and to start “listening to the ocean”.
The second exhibition is the result of a contest promoted in part by the Portuguese Association of Fish Canning Industries (ANICP).
Following the theme Discovering the Ocean, design students across the country submitted their proposals for tins used for the canning of fish.
The exhibition at Portimão’s museum showcases around 50 of the top designs from the competition.
Both exhibitions can be visited from Wednesday to Sunday from 10am to 6pm during July and 7.30pm to 11pm during August.
Image: ©BJ Boulter