Marine Litter… What Do We Know?
- Friendly Fins
- Dec 18, 2024
- 6 min read
Updated: Mar 7
Nowadays it is talked about everywhere, waste has become a very serious problem to solve and to consider part of our daily life.
Here we do not want to talk about burning issues such as the amount of plastic in the sea, cutting-edge technologies to remove it or some innovative project at a global level.
Here we only aim to talk to you about Friendly Fins, to talk to you about it with our eyes: simple, curious and friendly.
Now Friendly Fins, imagine yourself on a beautiful tropical white beach, in our case in the Maldives…
Walking on the beach
In our imagination, the Maldivian islands could resemble small corners of paradise: palm trees overlooking the calm and crystalline sea, warm and enveloping air, soft and fresh sand, timeless quiet…
Yes, maybe once it really was like this, but now we are sorry to disappoint dreamers like us but reality is not always like this. When you walk in these places you can touch the problem of marine waste with your hand: the beach is a clear example of this serious problem.
Often reality appears so naked and raw before our eyes: plastic bottles are those that always reign supreme, followed closely by polystyrene, shoes, straws, toothbrushes, ropes, fishing lines, cans of tuna… The list is often enriched with broken plates, glass bottles, bags full of floating garbage, diapers, in short there is no room for imagination.
In an uninhabited place or one inhabited by very few people, the question arises spontaneously:
“How did all this stuff get here?”
What's beyond the waste
The beach after a thorough and deep cleaning, becomes splendid, clean, a joy for the heart; but it is not easy to maintain it. We often observe the locals who do not care about this problem, at first glance they may not have sensitivity, they may not care about the environmental heritage they have, or simply do not want to clean.
“We are not here to act as lawyers, we are happy to just tell what we have seen”
What does it mean to clean the beach?
Now we will tell you what it means to clean a beach: imagine walking along the shoreline and starting to collect the waste you find, at the end of the walk you will have collected your nice little pile of waste and thrown it in the bins...
Small parenthesis: currently, in many islands of the world and especially in the Maldives, there are open-air incinerators that burn all the waste produced by the islanders and that comes from the sea.
Now the beach is perfect! No bottles, no plastic bags, finally the beach of dreams…
Let's go back after a week... The beach will be exactly the same as we found it before cleaning it.
During our Maldivian experience, we have cleaned and seen beaches cleaned many times but we assure you that it is really difficult to manage to keep it clean, despite the good will.
We have noticed many women, over the weeks, filling entire vans with plastic bottles and waste collected in different parts of the island. Real punitive expeditions towards these defaced beaches, the commitment has been great but not always rewarded, because it is true, many inhabitants of the Maldives are not sensitive towards their environment and this prevents the island from remaining clean longer ... This also happens in Italy however, we should not be surprised when we see a Maldivian throw a piece of paper on the ground, after all in Italy they do much worse, right?
But what if we told you that most people on Feridhoo Island drink rainwater?
This means that 90% of the plastic bottles found on the beach are not from the island but come from the sea, carried by currents, tides or simply thrown into the sea by some passing boat.
Consequently, no one would be happy if they continually found other people's waste at home and had to remove it and worry about its disposal...
In the coming years, the Maldives will adopt very strict procedures for waste collection, plastic reuse and environmental protection, will this be the solution?
We Friendly Fins think that the solution is only people… Read on to find out why!
The waste that cannot be seen…
We have talked about what we see so far, about a sad reality that is there for all to see, but what is not seen?
The beach is just the antechamber of what we can encounter in the sea, but here it is easier for it to go unnoticed, a person snorkeling around certainly does not go to look at the waste buried in the middle of the coral reef!
“Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it isn't there…”
Despite what you might think, plastic, the marine waste par excellence, is not only floating but sinks and can cause unimaginable damage.
Think of a plastic bag that ends up underwater and covers the surface of a coral that needs the sun to ensure life for it and its small symbiotic algae, or the current to be able to filter the nourishment… Obviously we are talking about plastic that manages to reach the bottom and therefore is not eaten by other animals first. This is another topic that we will address…
The waste that we encounter underwater is very different from that “beached”, during our trips to the coral reef, we encountered the most disparate things: diapers, shoes, umbrellas, bags of stones and electrical wires, lots of fishing lines and material, and finally an abnormal quantity of fabrics.
Fabrics? But how come those don’t decompose?
Dangerous fabrics
It is expected that the most dangerous waste is that which takes the longest time to decompose, in reality glass is less polluting than plastic and plastic pollutes as much (or perhaps less?) than a dress in the coral reef.
It seems that the habit of throwing clothes that are no longer “useful” into the sea is common, judging by the quantity found on the coral reef. All this mass of fabrics “rests” on the coral reef, suffocates it, clings to it and tears the corals, silting them up and killing them. This is what shocked us the most, we were prepared for the amount of plastic on the beach but the famous biodegradable and decomposable materials are equally harmful to the environment until they disappear completely. Finding parts of the coral reef completely ruined by “clothes” leaves a bitter taste in the mouth, without thinking about those already buried and disappeared (at first sight).
What can we Friendly Fins do about waste?
In reality, there are many things we can do that are also easy to put into practice.
Don't throw anything into the environment
So let's not be fooled, Friedly Fins, by the so-called biodegradable materials, let's not throw anything into the environment anyway because we don't know how long it takes for it to "disappear" and above all what effect it can have on the environment in the meantime.
Collect waste
We often feel a bit of disappointment and embarrassment in picking up waste from the ground. I agree with you, it is not exactly the most hygienic thing in the world but it is extremely important right now…
Why?
If we were to find ourselves on a beach, any beach around the world, we could set a good example by picking up the waste present. And up to this point, if you have reached the end of this article, it means that the topic is close to your heart and you are true environmentally friendly Friendly Fins! During our stay in the Maldives, we noticed that the locals were curious, they watched us when we collected plastic and pulled bags of waste out of the sea. Curiosity generates interest and interest generates the desire to try. We certainly will not have convinced all the inhabitants to pick up waste but certainly someone will do it and in turn will be able to convince someone else!
Focus on recycling and saving
Living on an island for a long time, where there is nothing outside of basic necessities, you really realize how many superfluous things we love to surround ourselves with in everyday life. Often we find our house overflowing with more or less useful "things" that are old, or out of fashion, or simply we no longer remember having.
Here is Friendly Fins, we think that environmental protection starts right from our homes... Now is no longer the time to accumulate and accumulate, now to change things we should limit expenses to those that are really useful, eliminating the superfluous, everything we buy requires energy and material expenditure to be able to generate it, one day this thing will have to be thrown away and disposed of.
Why not recycle too? We still have to get used to this new way of living, but I assure you that it works and this is of fundamental importance for the environment. This topic however requires much more time than a few lines!
Sooner or later we will talk about it, but in the meantime tell us what you think about this burning topic!
Leave us a comment Friendly Fins!
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