January 15, 2017 at 6:51 pm

Plastic are one of the silent killers which can be found floating in the seas, and oceans. And other water bodies too are dumped with garbage which is non biodegradable and takes centuries to degrade. General sources of pollution caused by plastics are the fishing nets thrown by fishermen carelessly which are not eco friendly.

Plastic and other wastes dumped by ships and cruise liners in the marine waters, other types of plastics are those thrown by tourists like bottles, plastic covers, bags and used packets of other products which are of one time use and not recycled properly. In the rivers too we have loads of garbage which has not been segregated being dumped in the waters these are toxic and end up affecting the aquatic life. Many of these dumping sites are for reclaiming of water bodies.

This leads to shrinkage of area of ponds, lakes, rivers and other water bodies. If the packages are related to food wildlife, aquatic life and marine life ingest the same and suffer silently leading to a horrible death. Many cases have been reported where when the animal have been cut open to find out the cause of the death huge piles of plastics were found in their stomachs. This is a very sorry state of affairs and forests are also dumped with thrash by tourists and plastics can be seen strewn all over the forest area.

Cleaning up operations are also not brisk leading to wildlife ingesting the same. Ghost fishing nets which are the silent killers not only cause pollution but also lots of marine animals eat them or get stuck in them dying a painful death. There are thousands of nets floating in the oceans as this article is being written. Many marine creatures like turtles, snakes, fish and others come near the sea coast or shores to lay eggs and end up getting trapped in them. They cannot complete the process of laying eggs in the estuaries and going back to the oceans.

This process is quite complicated and the young ones too have to go to the sea once they come out of the eggs. Due to the above problems and fishing activities the survival rate plunges drastically leading to decline of their population. Which results in the fall in their numbers and affects the food chain. These unscientific fishing activities also kill the coral reefs, and other marine life living near the coastal areas.

This also results in loss to the fishing community too as the yield decreases drastically. Leading to problems in the fishing families who totally depend on only one source of income. This is the problem all over the world more so in India as our country is covered by seas from all the three sides. Fisher folk are poor and do not adopt scientific methods. Most of the times the intention to earn more profits takes over the noble deed of conservation which is very much essential for their daily earnings to be profitable.

Some of the wrong fishing practices are mechanized boats, dynamiting, fishing trawlers, mining and throwing fishing nets and not retrieving them when the fishing is over and hunting expeditions and mass scale killing. These are some of the very important issues in the case of marine life conservation and the damage plastics cause to the wildlife and marine life.

Steps have to be taken to reverse this trend and fisherman should also be taken on board and sensitized about this problem by conducting educational programs as to how much loss they would face due to faulty fishing methods, as it affects their well being, livelihood and economy too. Hope the concerned governments, bodies all over the world take note of this and implement plans and agreements already in place more effectively and see that the trend is reversed on an urgent basis.