For years man thought - "the sea endures everything", and therefore threw various types of waste into it. Because of this, the world's seas are very polluted, marine animals are harmed, and so are we. In honor of the peak of the bathing season: a special environmental section on pollution and cleaning the sea
Written by: Ariel Keres, young Galileo
Travelers who arrived at the beach of Rosh Hanakara in the middle of last June had the chance to see a rare animal - a monk seal. The lovable seal swam to his delight near the famous woodpecker rocks, dived and came back up, and generally seemed content with life. This was not the first time in recent years that the hermit seal was seen in the Nakrot area. The return of an animal that disappeared from the waters of Israel in the XNUMXs can testify to several things, mainly that the environment is suitable for it and it can live in it.
The problem: pollution of the sea and beaches
Man tends to pollute the sea because he mistakenly believes that the sea is so big that nothing can affect it. Therefore, we used to pour waste of any kind into the sea (chemical substances, sewage, and so on) and dump it in garbage - among other things, building materials, oil, nylon, and tar from ships. Power plants located on the coast use seawater to cool the facilities that generate electricity and produce thermal pollution, which means very hot, and sometimes polluted, water near the coast.
Other pollutants are rain precipitation known as "acidic", meaning rain that contains polluting particles of industrial pollution. The result: the Mediterranean Sea is very polluted, the environment has been damaged, and the monk seal (and not only him) has left our area. The problem is of course not limited to the Mediterranean Sea, but exists in almost all lakes, seas and oceans in the world. The pollution of the sea and the pollution of the beach seriously harm the marine environment - the animals and plants in it, and of course also us, the humans.
possible solutions
- Legislation and enforcement: in order to stop the pollution of the seas and beaches in the world, it is necessary to take care of extensive legislation - and also to enforce the laws, that is, to impose heavy penalties and fines on the polluters. Regarding the pollution of the oil industry, the situation with us has greatly improved thanks to legislation, enforcement and technological developments. When I was a child we would come back from the beach with tar from ships stuck to our feet because the tankers were washed in the middle of the sea and their waste reached the shore. Today it is forbidden to do so, and there is no more tar on the beaches. The laws passed in Israel and around the world make it difficult for the giant companies to pollute the sea at will.
- Preliminary treatment: waste, such as industrial effluents or sewage, can be treated before being discharged into streams and the sea, and thus the materials that reach the sea pollute it less.
- clean up: each of us must avoid leaving trash on the beaches or throwing it into the sea.
What's going on in the world?
In the world, awareness of sea pollution and the need to prevent it is increasing. Back in 1975, the Barcelona Conference convened, in which 17 Mediterranean countries tried to form a treaty and action plans to prevent further pollution of the Mediterranean Sea. The conference decided on actions in a variety of fields: legislation, conducting in-depth research to understand the sources of pollution and the ways to stop it, and of course planning - analysis of long-term development trends (for example, construction on beaches or the establishment of drilling facilities near them) against the needs of environmental quality; The year 1998 was declared by the United Nations as the year of the oceans, and countries around the world began planning ways to reduce sea pollution; At the same time, various green organizations such as "Greenpeace" are fighting against sea pollutants through means such as demonstrations, signing petitions and lawsuits. For example, not long ago, the "British Petroleum" company (BP) had to pay billions of dollars as compensation for the enormous damage caused by an oil leak at one of its drilling facilities in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.
What is happening in Israel?
It seems that the condition of the sea and the beaches in Israel is slowly improving, but there is still a lot of work to be done. The Sea and Beaches Division of the Ministry of Environmental Protection is responsible for monitoring pollution and maintaining the quality of the marine environment. In recent years, there has been a struggle in Israel against construction on the beaches, and in 2005 the "Law on the Protection of the Coastal Environment" was enacted, which defines the coastal environment as an area that extends from a distance of 300 meters east of Israel's coastline to the border of our territorial waters, at a distance of 22 kilometers from the coast. One of the effective methods of preventing sea pollution is to declare a marine nature reserve that is forbidden to pollute, build, drill and even fish in. In the world, the matter is gaining tremendous momentum (Australia, for example, has declared sea areas with the size of millions of square kilometers as nature reserves around the continent), but in Israel the area of marine nature reserves is still very small. The Nature and Parks Authority is formulating a proposal that will lead to the declaration of twenty percent of Israel's territorial waters as nature reserves, and thus we may see more monk seals on our shores in the future.
What does the future hold?
Although the awareness of the importance of cleaning the seas is increasing, the growth of the world's population leads to the continued exploitation of the sea, and therefore also its pollution. The UN announced last June that plastic is becoming one of the most serious threats to the sea. The oceans are full of tiny pieces of plastic; These release toxic substances, and they may reach the food and endanger the coral reefs and other animals. The cost of the damages - more than 13 billion dollars a year. The annual report of the United Nations Environmental Protection Agency states that in practice it is impossible to clean the sea of the huge amounts of plastic it contains, and emphasis must be placed on stopping the pollution. Will the green organizations, the technological developments and the laws against sea pollution succeed in bringing about a significant reduction in pollution in the future? We will have to wait and see, and it is important that each of us be aware and contribute our part.
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