Role of oceans in human lives discussed
The sandy beaches look like barren wastelands, but as you enter the water in the ocean and start to go deeper, a world rich in biodiversity opens up.
This space is home to a wide array of creatures ranging from tiny algae to the blue whale, but how many of us got the chance to experience this, asks Alosha Samaraarachchi, nine- year- old young ‘ marine biologist’ who addressed a World Ocean Day event in Sri Lanka on June 8.
Oceans provide half of the world’s oxygen and also absorb a lot of carbon dioxide, which helps to slow down global warming. Oceans support our well-being by providing food, but overfishing and other harmful activities impact its biodiversity, preventing the oceans’ ability to help us, Alosha said. Oceans have also become our biggest dumping yard where it becomes a plastic soup.
As a global youth ambassador of the Marine Biological Association of the UK, Alosha aims to promote marine conservation among adults and children in Sri Lanka and hopes to make a positive impact on marine conservation.
Alosha stressed the importance of conserving the oceans.
Daniel Fernando, a co-founder of the Blue Resources Trust (BRT), says many Sri Lankans are unaware of the vast marine biodiversity of our island’s shores, or the threats facing our marine biodiversity and ecosystems.
BRT in collaboration with the Australian High Commission in Sri Lanka and the Tokyo Cement Group organised an event for World Oceans Day titled “Know Our Oceans”.
This included an exhibition and short talks. The exhibition highlighted marine conservation issues through displays, selected specimens from the BRT scientific collection, and underwater photographs.
Amanda Jewell, the deputy high commissioner for Australia in Sri Lanka, mentioned the importance of ocean conservation and educating more people
about the importance of the heritage of oceans.
She highlighted that Sri Lanka and Australia are both islands connected by the Indian Ocean with many similar challenges in balancing the needs of people and conserving the immense biodiversity within their ocean territory.
A presentation by Nishan Perera, co-founder of BRT highlighted the state of Sri Lanka's coral reefs.
He took the audience through a pictorial journey of the coral reefs from the 1990s to the present day, showcasing changes and what the future may hold.
“We get coral reefs even off Colombo on the west coast and some of these are still very rich in fish life,” Mr. Perera said.
But, most coral reefs in the south are destroyed, and reefs on the east coast are better preserved. It is important to protect the remaining coral cover, he said.
Illegal methods such as dynamite fishing destroys these coral reefs with reported cases of blast fishing even inside the pigeon island marine national park.
Prof. Kokila Konasinghe from the department of public and international law at the Faculty of Law, Colombo University, spoke about ocean rights from the angle of nature.
She argued for a human-focused view of nature, looking at the rights of humans.
However, this notion is now being challenged, with a movement towards treating nature itself as a legal entity with rights to being conserved and not harmed.
She highlighted several landmark legal rulings in New Zealand, India, and Ecuador that recognised the rights of natural ecosystems to be protected from human activities, and how in the future, the legal framework for nature conservation may be different from the way we see it today.
The importance of engaging local c o m m u n i t i e s, and understanding the complexities and diverse relationships of people with the ocean was highlighted by Dr. Gayathri Lokuge, senior researcher at the Centre for Policy Alternatives, through examples of her work across Sri Lanka.
“When you check the statistics, it gives an assumption only the male is involved in the fisheries sector, but it wasn’t the true picture,” Dr. Lokuge said explaining her case of the women who collect mussels in the Kinniya Lagoon. “Even I didn’t know the level of involvement of women in fishing, but our study revealed 590 fisherwomen in the Trincomalee coast.’’
These people who are ‘invisible’ in statistics should also be considered in managing the fisheries sector, she said.