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Asked by time46map to Philip, Maxime, Jake, Ann, Annette, Amy Heather on 11 Nov 2019.
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Maxime Savatier answered on 11 Nov 2019: last edited 11 Nov 2019 11:00 pm
Yes we are. Especially coastlines, where water flowing from rivers and groundwater carries all sort of things from our activities, which in turn change the sea life.
But our impact is also global: the plastic we are throwing away every day can be found in even the most remote places of the sea, in the form of small fragments. Part of the CO2 emissions of our cars and industries are also absorbed by the ocean, making it progressively more acidic, weakening the animals in the sea that are using calcium carbonates to grow, like shellfish, corals etc…
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Amy Heather Fitzpatrick answered on 22 Nov 2019:
OK so many ways that I am going to do bullet points
-Shipping and fracking for oil underwater causes huge noise pollution. The noise can literally make the dolphins and whales ears burst and sometimes cause brain bleeds. Most of the time it prevents them from communicating to each other and hunting for food, as they use sound to communicate
-PLastic waste, especially microplastics, confuse most animals and fish as they recognise food sources by colour, and many coloured plastics are similar to the colour of their food. On top of this the microplastics on the sea surface, block the sunlight, prevent they phytoplankton from growing and trapping carbon dioxide. Phytoplankton are the biggest source of carbon trapping on earth, more than trees
-Pollution, industrial and sewage. Sewage can add too many nutrients to a bay and cause big algal blooms, which starve the fish underneath of nutrients and create a toxic environment. Sewage also carries bacteria that are multi drug resistant and when they get into water they can spread all the world, into our water that we drink, the fish and shellfish that we eat. This is really dangerous. Industrial waste in our water, has harmful chemicals that kill fish on first contact or again provide too much nitrogen and cause algal blooms.
-Increased carbon emissions cause more acidic rain to fall, and the increases the acidity of the water. This is a problem for shellfish and crustaceans as they use the free calcium in water to help form their shells. Acidic water has less calcium available, as it combine with the acid and ends up as carbonic acid. SOmeitmes their shells are not strong enough for them to live long enough to reproduce
-Overfishing. The first issue here is only eating two types of fish in Ireland (cod and salmon). In order to keep enough types of wild fish in the ocean, we need to eat more types of fish and also eat less wild fish and maybe more farmed fish (if the farmed fish are not farmed with heavy use of drugs and damaging farm practices such as dredging). Also the types of nets, often used illegally by fisherman can end up catching baby fish or mammals such as dolphins. So we need more officiers and naval ships out there checking that fisherman are not using these nets, and people need to think about the type of fish they put on their plate at home.
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