Zara Teixeira highlights the importance of salt pans in the podcast “Palavrões de Ciência” (Science Cusses)

MARE researcher Zara Teixeira was the most recent guest on the “Palavrões da Ciência” podcast. In conversation with writer and translator Marco Mendes and communications specialist Cristina Soares, the MARE researcher defined some “Science Cusses”, such as halophytes, marnoto and mota. 

What is a salt pan? Zara Teixeira begins by answering this question: “Traditional salt pans, which is where I work, are open-air salt pans made up of several compartments. Each compartment has a different depth, (which) decreases and in these traditional salt pans, as the depth of the compartments decreases, the water passes through, its salt gradient increases, until in the last compartments, which are the crystallization compartments, we have the salt.” The MARE researcher studies the coastal environments of salt pans and their historical, cultural and environmental heritage, highlighting the importance of these pans, including for our food.

Although much of the salt we consume comes from the sea, the researcher points out that it is refined, which results in the loss of other minerals present in seawater, such as magnesium. This salt ends up being poorer for human consumption. “For our health, as it only has sodium chloride, the amounts we use in cooking are usually exaggerated, and that's the problem.” The recommendation is to consume salt in moderation and prefer quality options, such as coarse sea salt, fleur de sel and halophyte plants, which are adapted to high salinity environments and are able to incorporate salt.

In addition to salt, these plants have the ability to incorporate the so-called Blue Carbon, the atmospheric carbon that is stored by marine organisms. “We're trying to contribute to the conservation of macroalgae, microalgae and these halophytic plants precisely because they have this ability to capture, and more than capture, to store for a long time the carbon that we now know is in excess in the atmosphere,” says Zara Teixeira, noting that this is one of the services provided by marine ecosystems, which could be part of the solution to climate change.

Another benefit of halophytic plants is their ability to absorb the force of water. “In stormy situations, they prevent flooding in cities, or they can even prevent a flood, because they can retain the water,” explains the MARE researcher. “In the case of salt pans in particular, they have walls around them, which we call motas. As they are relatively high, they also protect us from the advance of the sea, even in the event of a rise in the average sea level. This is another service and another reason why we also want to help prevent this activity from disappearing.”

In addition to its environmental importance, the production of salt in traditional salt pans also has an extremely rich cultural and historical aspect, and even has its own terminology, such as marnoto, rés or cilha. For this reason, researcher Zara Teixeira is working to prevent this art from disappearing.

To this end, the researcher is developing a Living Laboratory related to salt pans, in other words, “a community of people who think about and test innovation, in this case innovation in the area of salt, in the area of salt production, or even tourism related to the area of salt.”

“Any activity, any innovation that can be related to these environments, I want to have a community that can work together, have ideas, have researchers who can come up with the solutions, test the solutions and implement the solutions,” concludes the researcher.

To listen to the episode click HERE