Heatwave batters Spain's Mediterranean mussel crop

With the country hit by a long and brutal heatwave this summer, the water temperature in the Ebro Delta, the main mussels production area of the Spanish Mediterranean, is touching 30 degrees Celsius.

And any grower who hasn't removed their molluscs in time will have lost everything.

But that's not the worst of it: most of next year's crop has also died in one of the most intense marine heatwaves in the Spanish Mediterranean.

By the end of July, experts said the western Mediterranean was experiencing an "exceptional" marine heatwave, with persistently hotter-than-normal temperatures posing a threat to the entire marine ecosystem.

The relentless sun has heated up the mix of fresh and saltwater along Catalonia's delicate coastal wetlands where the River Ebro flows into the Mediterranean.

On a scorching summer morning in Deltebre, one of the municipalities of the Delta, the mussel rafts -- long wooden structures with ropes attached which can each grow up to 20 kilograms of mussels -- should be teeming with workers hurrying around during the busy season.

But there is hardly any movement.

"We lost the yield that was left, which wasn't much, because we were working to get ahead so we wouldn't go through this," explains Carles Fernandez, who advises the Ebro Delta's Federation of Mollusc Producers (Fepromodel).

"But the problem is that we've lost the young stock for next year and we'll have quite a high cost overrun."