Planet Farms, the revolutionary project that responds to the scarcity of fertile soil and water with sustainability and innovation.
I have always sensed a strange connection with my island, beyond what is normal; a bond that is wild, archaic, something passed down over hundreds of years.
Between the sea and the land, I lived the most wonderful age: my adolescence. The most carefree period of every boy's life, and especially for those who live there, in contact with nature. Bathed in the Mediterranean, the island bewitched me with its wonders and its sea, so much so that with the passing of the years, it pushed me to document everything I saw with my eyes.
My name is Marco Spinelli, and today I live in Milan, working as a photographer and documentarist with a special focus on protecting the environment. I mainly dedicate myself to themes of protection, conservation and awareness of ecosystems, particularly marine ones.
My passion for the sea started as a child, thanks to my family. I learned to swim with my father and brother, and I immediately felt the need to explore that hidden world. I think that mankind searches for the sea, because it is able to reflect our emotions and give us comfort.
In recent years, I have specialised in the creation of "underwater" documentaries.
For me, describing this "world of silence" is a need, something I feel inside that gives me the possibility to connect with the quintessential primordial element: water.
Water forces us to slow down, to listen in silence to the emotions and feelings in our body, taking us back to our origins; in other words, to a completely natural situation with no external conditioning.
I am convinced that if every one of us gave ourselves the space for an immersive relationship with nature and its environments, we could all experience moments of true connection with our planet and feel the emotions that are worth so much more than any education or awareness of environmental sustainability.
Water encourages relationships and communication, because we feel freer in water - it changes our concept of space, and we become more open to sharing. Diving and exploring the depths of the seas has allowed me to discover the infinite beauty of our planet.
Photographs and videos are traces of the past, witnesses of reality and hopes of conservation for the future; it is for this very reason that I try to tell the story of everything I experience through my camera, so that it can reach other people exactly as I personally lived it in that particular moment.
But not everything down there sparkles.
In recent years, I have had the opportunity to travel and document what mankind is doing to our planet, particularly to the oceans.
According to UNEP data - the United Nations Environment Programme - only 15% of the waste in the sea floats on the surface; another 15% remains in the water column, and 70% sits on the seabed.
With heavy hearts, we have observed all these percentages.
Last year, during a dive in Sicily, we made a horrifying discovery: the largest area of shallows in the gulf of Cefalù was completely covered by abandoned nets, so-called ghost nets.
The depths of our seas, and especially the Mediterranean Sea, are full of fishing nets either discarded or accidentally lost, and they represent a threat for marine ecosystems: a danger for marine fauna, because animals become trapped and suffocate.
Every year, in the oceans, according to the annual UNEP reports, 640 thousand tonnes of fishing nets are abandoned, and the numbers are increasing. Thousands of square metres of discarded fishing nets are spread over ever wider areas of our seabeds, causing a growing form of desertification of marine ecosystems.
This is only one of a great many problems that afflict our seas. Mankind has altered the chemical composition of the air we breathe, the soil, the rocks, the oceans, the atmosphere. We are destroying everything around us.
With my documentaries, I try to sensitise people so that they can make the first step in the right direction.
And I continue to dive, and the more I dive, the more I fall in love with the sea and feel that primordial need to document the beauty we need to restore our connection with, in order to protect it.
Planet Farms, the revolutionary project that responds to the scarcity of fertile soil and water with sustainability and innovation.
Soil conservation and the correct management of water resources: the strategy from CONAF which combines science, agriculture and ecology, protecting the planet.
