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FIGURE 8  4VKPÄLKMYVT-PN\YLVMSPJLUJL,7(

FIGURE 9 Posidonia oceanica wrack on a pocket beach of Favignana  In the present study, we describe a multipurpose
                                                                  facility, designed and built with beached biomasses
Material and methods                                              covered by a casing made with biocompatible
                                                                  fibre padding and with biomass harvested from the
The first action of the project has been the analysis of          beaches.
the public environmental awareness, carried out in                In Figure 10, three different steps of preparation
order to investigate if and how tourists could tolerate           of the structures are clearly illustrated. A first
the presence of marine plants laying on the beaches               use of the structure is “in situ”. On stretches of
of Favignana Island. Then, a procedure has been                   rocky coast adjacent to the point of collection, the
implemented in order to remove all the waste that may             “mattress” can be arranged in order to obtain an
be present on the beach.                                          area useful for bathing and tourist recreation and
Afterwards,the recover and the use of vegetal biomasses           to overcome those rocky outcrops that otherwise
has been carried out for:                                         do not allow to take advantage of sharp and rough
1. beach restoration and improvement of the beach                 surfaces.
                                                                  A second use, is to dive the structure, preferably below
    access;                                                       the closure depth (Figure 11), which can be calculated
2. compost production;                                            by using Hellermeier’s equation [20] e [21].
3. restoration of the meadows and the seabed showing
                                                                  Results
    signs of regression of Posidonia (due, for example,
    to the anchors or the illegal trawling at the coast).         According to the study of ENEA, carried out in the
                                                                  summers of 2012 and 2013 through the distribution
                                                                  of a questionnaire and the appropriate data analysis,
                                                                  about 60% of the tourists visiting the Egadi Islands
                                                                  knows the ecological importance of the Posidonia
                                                                  seagrass. Nevertheless, for 33% of the tourists the
                                                                  beached debris of the seagrass represents a problem:
                                                                  they associate this debris to inconveniences related

86 EAI Energia, Ambiente e Innovazione 4/2015
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