In Greece, divers find ‘gulf of plastic corals’
Warming killing corals
ANDROS, Greece, Aug 1, (Agencies): Like colourful corals, they swayed in the underwater current.
Only these were not gorgeous natural reefs built up over centuries but plastic bags, stuck to the golden Aegean seabed since a landfill crumbled into the water eight years ago.
Thousands of plastic bags were pulled from the sea off Greece’s Andros island this month by a team of divers and environmentalists who described what they found as a “gulf full of plastic corals.”
Seas polluted with plastic have become one of the most shocking symbols worldwide of mankind’s damage to the planet.
“It was a very scary thing to see,” said Arabella Ross, a volunteer diver with Aegean Rebreath, a group founded in 2017 to carry out underwater and coastal cleanups.
“It really shook me and I think it really shook everyone who saw it.”
The Mediterranean is among the seas with the highest levels of plastic pollution in the world, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) said in a report in June.
Greece produces about 700,000 tonnes of plastic waste a year, or about 68 kilos per person, it said. About 11,500 tonnes end up in its seas every year, and almost 70% of that returns to its coastline, one of the longest in the world.
The sea pollution off Andros is thought to date back to 2011, when heavy rain caused an informal waste disposal site to collapse, with most of the materials tumbling into the sea.
Aegean Rebreath divers plucked blue, black and yellow plastic bags tangled between reefs, swaying among fish.
It was “like the paradise of the Caribbean Sea, where you find coral reefs everywhere of every colour. It was the exact same thing, but instead of corals it was bags,” Ross said.
The team only managed to clean up a fraction of the plastic waste they found, she said. They also pulled 300 kg (660 lb) of discarded fishing nets - known as “ghost nets” – from Andros and in a separate operation in June off Salamina, a small island near Athens.
“If people are wondering where their rubbish ends up, we see it each time we go into the water,” Ross said.
A third of Guam’s coral reefs have died because of rising ocean temperatures, researchers said.
University of Guam researchers said increased temperatures killed 34% of Guam’s coral reefs between 2013 and 2017, The Pacific Daily News reported Monday.
About 60% of the reefs along Guam’s eastern coast are gone, scientists said.
“Never in our history of looking at reefs have we seen something this severe,” said Laurie Raymundo, UOG marine lab director and marine biology professor.
The study was published in the scientific journal Coral Reefs.
The problem is too urgent to ignore because corals are vital to fish habitats, provide coastal protection and contribute to Guam’s tourism industry, Raymundo said.
A multi-agency Guam Coral Reef Response team monitors the island’s reefs and tries to revive coral communities in line with a 2017 recovery plan. Guam is now in watch status for another mass bleaching event, which precedes large-scale reef death.
“Once we see temperatures starting to rise, this is when we activate our plan,” said Whitney Hoot, Guam Bureau of Statistics and Plans coral reef resilience coordinator.
Negative effects could be reduced by making changes in local stressors such as Guam’s pollution, sewage system and plastic waste, researchers said.
But elevated global carbon dioxide output is to blame for heightened water temperatures.
“It’s what we’re pumping into the atmosphere that is creating warmer temperatures,” Raymundo said, adding that places with “enormous populations” are contributing the majority of carbon entering the environment. “And it’s not small islands like Guam, nonetheless, we are affected by it.”
Guam is a territory of the United States in the western Pacific Ocean, about 5,800 miles (9,300 kilometers) west of San Francisco.
SANTIAGO, Chile: Chile’s navy has confirmed the spillage of 40,000 liters of diesel oil into the sea in a remote and pristine area of the South American country’s Patagonia and says it is working to mitigate the effects.
A navy statement says it received a call from the mining company CAP Saturday reporting the spill at the terminal of Guarello island, about 1,740 miles (2,800 kilometers) south of Chile’s capital. The area is one of the planet’s most untouched with important biodiversity.
The navy said on Sunday that it had deployed ships to the area to control damage from the spill and an investigation had been launched.
“The marine pollution control center was activated,” Ronald Baasch, said commander of the navy’s Third Naval Zone.
CAP said the incident has already been contained.
DAKAR: Tired of seeing Senegal’s seascapes spoiled by ever-growing mounds of cheap plastic bags, authorities plan to crack down on polluters by imposing fines and further restricting plastic use.
The West African country, whose beaches on the Atlantic attract tourists from all over the world, is one of the world’s biggest contributors to ocean plastic despite having a population of just 15 million.
A study in 2010, reported by the journal Science, put it 21st out of all nations for quantity of waste being dumped in the sea – with 254,770 tonnes, only just behind the United States, a vastly bigger economy with many times more people and coastline.
Across Senegal, plastic containers are strewn across roads, often with goats and cows feeding on them, while rubbish can be seen floating in the sea.
Globally, public awareness is growing about the harm being done by plastic, which hurts marine life and instead of biodegrading breaks down into ubiquitous microplastics.
According to science writer Mike Berners-Lee, of the nine billion tonnes of plastic ever produced, 5.4 billion has been dumped onto land or the sea - enough to shrink wrap the planet in clingfilm.