Embedded Files
What is this goal about?
"Learn how to use, protect and conserve the sea, the oceans and all the marine resources"
and why it matters?
The ocean produces over half of the world's oxygen
It covers almost 70 percent of the Earth's surface
It absorbs the excessive heat from the atmosphere, caused by the Global Warming, helping in this way to regulate the climate system
Provide us all the natural resources, like food, water and energy
Employ milions of people, specially in the fisheries industries, in fact the market value of the marine resources is around 3$ trillions per year
BUT WHAT IS HAPPENING?
One of the biggest issues nowdays is the marine pollution, in particular the plastic pollution in the ocean.
There are 2 types of marine pollution:
Chemical pollution, due to the human activity like for example intensive agriculture, a lot of chemical fertilizer end up on the ocean. It's a huge problems because the sea is absorbing too much nutrients and the process is altering the marine ecosystem; more algae and acquatic plants are growing faster causing a more production of carbon dioxide and a loss of oxygen (deoxygenation) for the ocean.
Trash pollution, consists in trash and debris of many items, mostly plastic, that are found in the oceans. Often the marine animal mistake plastic bag for food and eat them. Another examples is with the microplastics (tiny bits of broken down plastic), when the fishes eat them, the toxicity of the microplastic become part of their tissues. The larger animal ate the fishes so they are being poisened as well, in the end all this food end up in our plates, so indirectly we are eating this microplastic.
The ocean is facing a lot of negative consequences caused by human activities:
DEOXYGENATION, the sea is losing oxygen. The primary cause is the eutrophication, too many nutrients on the sea are modifying the marine ecosystem.
OCEAN ACIDIFICATION, the level of ph of the ocean is decreasing because the ocean are absorbing too much carbon dioxide, and all of this is caused by the burning of fossing fuels (use to produce energy, especially to make vehicles run). It's a problem because in this way the ocean is losing an important material, the carbonate; it's essential for the marine creature to form their shells and skeleptons and without it they will not be able to it and the shells already existing will disappear soon.
OCEAN WARMING, of course it's due to the absorbtion of the excessive heat and it's conducting to a lot of marine heatwaves too.
OVERFISHING
Literally is the action of the fisherman when they catch too many fishes and they don't have time to reproduce themselves. So not only a lot of fishes species are at risk of extinction but as we know for many animals the fishes are the main food, as a result they will also be at risk of extinction until all the food chain will be affected.
China is one of the countries who has one of the biggest problems regarding overfishing.
They have one of the largest boats/fleets for catching fish, in fact the country is one, if not the major contribute of the many species of fish, whales...that are disappearing.
They are not only using their fleets in the near oceans but they are expanding the fishing nets to other country like Africa and South America, becoming one of the reason why the locals have not enough marine resources right now.
To avoid to be detected by the police they even remove their flags, we are talking about illegal fishing.
Illegal fishing happens when foreign vessels decide to fish in water that are under the jurisdiction of another country, without permission.
It's a real criminal activity and like every activity the reasons behind that are the profit, the huge monetary benefit the fishermen, the fisheries industry get from it.
WHAT WE DID?
As activity for this thematic, we decided to create a song about saving and protecting the sea, thesong is for kids of 7/10 years old.
The children are the future and if we succeed to plant good seeds in them, then there is hope of achieving a real change.
Also we had the amazing possibility to take part in some cleaning up beach actions with the association E-Redes.
The association deals with all the trash people throw away in the sea and coast by collecting them. After that, Leandro, the men who explained us how the organization work, said they differentiate the type of trash.
They are also involved in creating biodegradable fishing nets.
During our clean up action we found a huge quantity of fishing nets brought by the sea to the shore.
Fishing nets are a big threat to marine species. Fishing nets account up to 70% of all the plastic in the ocean.
In order to tackle this problem, new solutions must be found. The Environmental Educational Centre of Esposende in Portugal is making efforts to help in this matter by developing biodegradable fishing nets.
On June 21st we did our third cleaning action in Esposende. This time we learnt about EREDES, a local project and study funded by EEA grants. The litter that we took is classified in EREDES and serves as data to develop their study.
This project involves the supply of biodegradable gillnets and trammel nets to the local fishing community, for evaluation of the contribution of this initiative in reducing both ghost-fishing and the introduction of synthetic plastic material into the ocean.
Finally, and before our final cleaning action, we were able to have a fruitful discussion about the idea in hand and prospective of the project, as well as about its importance within the UN SDG’s framework.
We loved learning about new projects pushed by inspiring young people!
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse